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THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



THE 



ESSAYS OF ELIA 



WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

ALFRED AINGER 



iLontron 

MACMILLAlvr AND CO., Limited 

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1899 , 



All rights reserved 






75130 



This Edition of the Essays of Elia luas first printed in 1883 
Reprinted 1884, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1891, 1892, 1894, 1896, 1898, 1899 



INTRODUCTION. 

The two volumes of miscellaueous writings by Charles 
Lamb, published by the OUiers in 1818, contained a 
variety of prose sufficient to prove once more that the 
study and practice of verse is one of the best trainings 
for a prose style. In his dedication of the poetical volume 
to Coleridge, Lamb half apologises for having forsaken 
his old calling, and for having " dwindled into prose and 
criticism." The apology, as I have elsewhere remarked, 
was hardly needed. If we except the lines to Hester 
Savary and a few of the sonnets and shorter pieces, there 
was little in the volume to weigh against the two essays 
on Hogarth and the tragedies of Shakspeare. It was 
the result of the miscellaneous and yet thorough character 
of Lamb's reading from a -boy that the critical side of his 
mind was the first to mature. The shorter papers con- 
tributed by Lamb to Leigh Hunt's Reflector in 1811 — 
the year to which belong the two critical essays just 
mentioned — more or less framed on the model of the 
Tatler and its successors, give by comj^arison little pro- 
mise of the richness and variety of the Ella series of ten 
years later. On the other hand, there are passages in the 
critical essays, such as that on Lear, as represented on 
the stage, and the vindication of Hogarth as a moral 
teacher, which represent Lamb at his highest. 

On the republication of these miscellanies in 1818, it 
could not be overlooked that a prose writer of something 
like genius was coming to the front. One of the younger 
critics of the day, Henry Nelson Coleridge, reviewing the 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

volumes in the fifth number of the Etonian, in 1821, 
does not hesitate to declare that " Charles Lamb writes 
the best, tlie purest, and most geniune English of any 
man living," and adds the following acute remark : — 
" For genuine Anglicism, which amongst all other essen- 
tials of excellence in our native literatiu-e, is now recover- 
ing itself from the leaden mace of the Bamhler, he is 
quite a study ; his prose is absolutely perfect, it conveys 
thought, without smothering it in blankets." Lamb was 
indeed to do more than any man of his time to remove 
the Johnsonian incubus from our periodical literature. 
But the full scope of the writer's powers was not known, 
perhaps even to himself, till the opportunity afforded him 
by the establishment of the London Magazine in 1820. 
It did credit to the discernment of the editors of that 
publication, that no control seems to have been exercised 
over the matter or manner of Lamb's contributions. The 
writer had not to see all that made the individuality of 
his style disappear under the editor's hand, as his review of 
theUxcursion in the Quarterly had suffered under Gifford's, 
To " wander at its own sweet wiU " was the first neces- 
sity of Lamb's genius. And this miscellaneousness of 
subject and treatment is the first surprise and delight 
felt by the reader of Lamb. It seems as if the choice of 
subject came to him almost at haphazard, — as if, like 
Shakspeare, he found the fia-st plot that came to hand 
svdtable, because the hand that was to deal with it was 
absolutely secure of its power to transmute the most 
unpromising material into gold. Roast Pig, The Praise 
of Chimney-Sweepers, A Bachelor'' s Complaint of the Con- 
d%iet of Married People, Grace before Meat — the incon- 
gruity of the titles at once declares the humorist's 
confidence in the certainty of his touch. To have been 
commonplace on such topics would have been certain 
failiure. 

In the Character of the late Elia, by a Friend, 
which Lamb wrote in the interval between the publica- 
tion of the first and second series of essays, he hits off 



INTRODUCTION. vn 

the characteristics of his style in a tone half contemptuous, 
half apologetic, which yet contains a criticism of real value. 
" I am now at liberty to confess," he writes, " that much 
which I have heard objected to my late friend's writings 
was well foimded. Crude, they are, I grant you — a sort 
of unlicked, incondite things — villainously pranked in an 
affeclipd array of antique words and phrases. They had 
not been his, if they had been other than such ; and 
better it is that a writer should be natural in a self- 
pleasing quaintness than to affect a naturalness (so called) 
that should be strange to him." No better text could be 
found from which to discourse on Charles Lamb's English. 
The plea put forth almost as a paradox is nevertheless a 
simple truth. What appears to the hasty reader artificial 
in Lamb's style was natural to him. For in this matter 
of style he was the product of his reading, and from a 
child his reading had lain in the dramatists, and gener- 
ally in the great imaginative writers of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. Shakspeare and Milton he knew 
almost by heart : Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
Ford, and Webster, were hardly less familiar to him ; 
and next to these, the writers of the so-called meta- 
physical school, the later developments of the Euphuistic 
fashion, had the strongest fascination for him. Where 
the Fantastic vein, took the pedantic-humorous shape, 
as in Biu'ton ; or the metaiDhysical - humorous, as in 
Sir Thomas Browne ; or where it was combined with 
true poetic sensibility, as in Wither and Marvell, — of 
these springs Lamb had drimk so deeply that his mind 
was saturated with them. His own nature became 
"subdued to what it worked in." For him to bear, 
not only on his style, but on the cast of his mind and 
fancy, the mark of these writers, and many more in 
whom genius and eccentricity went together, was no 
matter of choice. It was this that constituted the " self- 
pleasing quaintness " of his literary manner. The phrase 
could not be improved. Affectation is a manner put on 
to impress others. Lamb's manner pleased himself — and 



vm INTRODUCTION. 

that is why, to use a familiar phrase, he was "happy 
in it." 

To one of the writers just named Lamb stands in a 
special relation. Sir Thomas Browne was at once a 
scholar, a mystic, and a humorist. His humour is so 
grave that, when he is enunciating one of those paradoxes 
he loves so well, it is often impossible to tell whether or 
not he wears a smile upon his face. To Lamb this com- 
bination of characters was irresistible, for in it he saw a 
reflection of himself He knew the writings of Browne 
so well that not only does he quote him more often than 
any other author, but whenever he has to confront the 
mysteries of life and death his mental attitude at once 
assimilates to Browne's, and his English begins to dilate 
and to become sombre. The dominant influence on Lamb 
in his reflective mood is Browne. His love of paradox, 
and the colour of his style, derived from the use of 
Latinised words never thoroughly acclimatised, is also 
from the same source — a use which, in the hands of a 
less skilful Latinist than Lamb, might have been hazard- 
ous. We do not resent his use of such words as agnize, 
arride, 7'ehict, reduce (in the sense of " bring back "), or 
even such portentous creations as sciential, cognition, in- 
tellectuals, and the like. Lamb could not have lived so 
long among the writers of the Renascence without sharing 
their fondness for word-coinage. And the flavour of the 
antique in style he felt to be an almost indispensable 
accompaniment to the antique in fancy. 

Another feature of his style is its allusiveness. He 
is rich in quotations, and in my notes I have succeeded iu 
tracing most of them to their soiu'ce, a matter of some 
difiiculty in Lamb's case, for his inaccuracy is all but 
perverse. But besides those avowedly introduced as such, 
his style is full of quotations held — if the expression may 
be allowed — in solution. One feels, rather than recognises, 
that a phrase or idiom or turn of expression is an echo of 
something that one has heard or read before. Yet such 
is the use made of his material, that a charm is added by 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

the very fact that Ave are thus contmually renewing cs- 
experience of an older day. His style becomes aromatic, 
like the perfume of faded rose-leaves in a china jar. 
With such allusiveness as this, I need not say that I have 
not meddled in my notes. Its whole charm lies in our 
recognising it for ourselves. The "prosperity" of an 
allusion, as of a jest, " lies in the ear of him that hears 
it," and it were doing a poor service to Lamb or his 
readers to draw out and arrange in order the threads he 
has wrought into the very fabric of his English. 

But although Lamb's style is essentially the product 
of the authors he had made his own, nothing would be 
more imtrue than to say of him that he read nature, or 
anything else, " through the spectacles of books." Words- 
worth would never have called to him to leave his books 
that he might come forth, and bring with him a heart 

"That watches and receives." 

It is to his own keen insight and intense sympathy that 
we owe everything of value in his writing. His observa- 
tion was his own, though when he gave it back into the 
world, the manner of it was the creation of his reading. 
Where, for instance, he describes (and it is seldom) the 
impression i^roduced on him by comitry sights and 
sounds, there is not a trace discoverable of that con- 
ventional treatment of nature which had been so common 
with mere book -men, before Burns and Wordsworth. 
Lamb did not care greatly for the country and its associa- 
tions. Custom had made the presence of society, streets 
and crowds, the theatre and the pictm-e gallery, an 
absolute necessity. Yet if he has to reproduce a memory 
of nural life, it is with the precision and tenderness of a 
Wordsworth. Take, as an example, this exquisite glimpse 
of a summer afternoon at Blakesware : — -" The cheerful 
store-room, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and 
read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and 
flappings of that one solitary wasp xhat ever haunted it, 
about me — it is in mine ears now. as oft as summer re- 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

tba'ns:"or again, the sweet garden scene from Drecmi 
'Children, where the spirit of Wordsworth seems to con- 
tend for mastery with the fancifulness of Marvell, " because 
I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old 
melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up 
the red berries and the fix apples, which were good for 
nothing but to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh 
grass, with all the fine garden smells around me — or bask- 
ing in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself 
ripening too along with the oranges and limes in that 
grateful warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to 
and fro in the fish pond at the bottom of the garden, with 
here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down 
the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their imperti- 
nent friskings." It is hard to say whether the poet's 
eye or the painter's is more surely exhibited here. The 
" solitary wasp" and the " sulky pike" are master-touches ; 
and in the following passage it is perhaps as much of 
Cattermole as of Goldsmith or Gray, that we are re- 
minded : — •" But would'st thou know the beauty of holi- 
ness 1 — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys 
of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some 
country church : think of the piety that has kneeled 
there — the meek pastor — the docile parishioner. With 
no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
drink in the tranquillity of the place, tiU thou thyself 
become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that 
kneel and weep around thee." 

The idea that some readers might derive from the 
casual titles and subjects of these essays, and the discur- 
siveness of their treatment, that they are hasty things 
thrown off in a moment of high spirits, is of course 
erroneous. Lamb somewhere writes of the essay just 
quoted, as a "futile effort wrung from him with slow 
pain." Perhaps this was an extreme case, but it is clear 
that most of the essays are the result of careful manipula- 
tion. They are elaliorate studies in style, and even in 
colour. Nothing is more remarkable about the essays 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

than the contrasts of colour they present — another illus- 
tration of Lamb's sympathy with the painter's art. The 
essay on the Chimney-Siveepers is a study in black : — 

" I like to meet a sweep — understand me — not a 
grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means 
attractive — but one of those tender novices, blooming 
through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not 
quite effaced from the cheek — such as come forth with 
the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little profes- 
sional notes sounding like the peep peep of a young 
sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark, shall I pronoimce 
them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the 
sunrise"? I have a kindly yearning towards those dim 
specks — poor blots— innocent blacknesses — I reverence 
these young Africans of our own growth — these almost 
clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption." 

And if one would understand Lamb's skill as a colour- 
ist, let him turn as a contrast to the essay on Quakers, 
which may be called a study in dove-colom- : — " The 
very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving 
a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something more 
than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a 
lily ; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun 
conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metro- 
polis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show 
like troops of the Shining Ones." 

The essay on Cliimney-Siveepers is one blaze of wit, 
which yet may pass unobserved from the very richness 
of its setting. How surprising, and at the same time 
how picturesque, is the following: — "I seem to re- 
member haviDg been told that a bad sweep was once 
left in the stack with his brush, to indicate which way 
the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, certainly, not 
much unlike the old stage dii'ection in Macbeth, where 
the 'apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his 
hand, rises.' " Lamb's wit, original as it is, shows often 
enough the influence of particular models. Of all old 
writers, none had a firmer hold on his affection than 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

Fuller. Now and then he has passages in deliberate 
imitation of Fuller's manner. The descriptions, in de- 
tached sentences, of the Poor Relation and the Con- 
valescent are Fuller all over. When Lamb writes of 
the Poor Relation — " He entereth smiling and embar- 
rassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and 
draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about 
dinner-time, when the table is full," — and so on, there can 
be no doubt that he had in mind such characterisation 
as Fuller's in the Good Yeoman, or the Degenerous 
Gentleman. The manner is due originally, of course, to 
Theophrastus, but it was from Fuller, I think, that Lamb 
derived his fondness for it. And throughout his writings 
the influence of this humorist is to be traced. How 
entirely in the vein of Fuller, for instance, is the follow- 
ing : — " They (the sweeps), from their little liulpits (the 
tops of chimneys), preach a lesson of patience to nian- 
kind ; " or this, again, from the essay Grace Before 
Meat: — " Gluttony and sui-feiting are no proper occasions 
for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read 
that he kicked ;" or, once more, this fine comment on 
the stillness of the Quaker's worship : — -" For a man to 
refrain even from good words and to hold 'his peace, it is 
commendable ; but for a midtitude, it is great mastery." 
But Lamb's wit, like his English, is Protean, and just 
as we think we have fixed its character and source, it 
escapes into new forms. In simile he finds opportunity 
for it that is all his own. What, for instance, can be 
more surprising in its uiiexpectedness than the descrip- 
tion in The Old Margate Hoy of the ubiquitous sailor on 
board : — " How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious 
occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here, 
there, Wee another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts 
of the deck"? Again, what wit — or shall we call it 
humour — is there in the gravity of his detail, by which 
he touches springs of delight unreached even by Defoe or 
Swift ; as in Roast Pig, where he says that the " father 
and son were summoned to take theu' trial at Pekin, then 



INTRODUCTION. xill 

an inconsiderable assize town ;" or more delightful still, 
later on : — ■" Thus this custom of firing houses continued, 
till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, 
lihe OUT Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of 
swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
(burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consum- 
ing a whole house to dress it." Or, for another vein, 
take the account of the mendacious traveller he aff'ects to 
remember as a fellow-passenger on his early voyage in 
the old Margate Hoy, who assures his admiring listeners 
that, so far from the Phoenix being a unique bird, it was 
by no means imcommon "in some parts of Upper Egypt," 
where the whole episode is not one jot the less humorous 
because it is clear to the reader, not that the traveller 
invented his facts, but that Lamb invented the traveller. 
Or yet once more, how exquisitely unforeseen, and how 
rich in tenderness, is the following remark as to the 
domestic happiness of himself and his "cousin Bridget" 
in Mackery End: — "We are generally in harmony, with 
occasional bickerings — as it should be among near rela- 
tions." What is the name for this antithesis of kony — 
this hiding of a sweet aftertaste in a bitter word 1 What- 
ever its name, it is a dominant flavour in Lamb's humour. 
There are two features, I think, of Lamb's method which 
distinguish him from so many humorists of to-day. He 
takes homely and familiar things, and makes them fresh 
and beautiful. The fashion of to-day is to vulgarise great 
and noble things by burlesque associations. The humor- 
ist's contrast is obtained in both cases ; only that in the 
one it elevates the commonplace, and in the other it 
r'^i^rades the excellent. And, secondly, in this generation, 
^^Men what is meant to raise a laugh has, nine times out 
*^ten, its root in cynicism, it should be refreshing to turn 
^\ia. and dwell in the humane atmosphere of these essays 
ne)Elia. 

*^^ To many other qualities that go to make up that highly 
^•^^nposite thing. Lamb's humour — to that feature of it 
'■^^lit consists in the unabashed display of his own uncon- 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

ventionality — his diflference from other people, and to 
that "metaphysical" quality of his wit which belongs to 
him in a far truer sense than as applied to Cowley and 
his school, it is sufficient to make a passing reference. 
But the mention of Cowley, by whom with Fuller, Donne, 
and the rest, his imagination was assuredly shaped, re- 
minds us once more of the charm that belongs to the 
" old and antique " strain heard through aU his more 
earnest utterances. As we listen to Elia the moralist, 
now with the terse yet stately egotism of one old 
master, now in the long-drawn-out harmonies of another, 
we live again with the thinkers and dreamers of two 
centuries ago. Sometimes he confides to us weaknesses 
that few men are bold enough to avow, as when he tells 
how he dreaded death and clung to life. " I am not con- 
tent to pass away ' like a weaver's shuttle.' These meta- 
phors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught 
of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, and 
reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love 
with this green earth ; the face of toW and countrj^ ; 
the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of 
streets." There is an essay by Lamb's friend Hazlitt on 
the Fear of Death, which it is interesting to compare 
with this. The one essay may have been possibly sug- 
gested by the other. Hazlitt is that one of Lamb's con- 
temporaries with whom it is natural to compare him. 
There are, indeed, obvious points of resemblance between 
them. Hazlitt wrote a vigorous and flexible style ; he 
could quote Shakspeare and Milton as copiously as Lamb; 
he wrote on Lamb's class of subjects ; he shared his V>ve 
of paradoxes and his frank egotistical method, xt^'- 1 
here all likeness ends. Hazlitt's essay is on the texwhp , 
since it does not pain us to reflect that there was of r' 
time when we did not exist, so it should be no agtP 
think that at some futiu-e time the same state c of t 
shall be. But this light-hearted attempt at co' r 
is found to be more depressing than the mela? coiT^ 
Lamb, for it lacks the two things needful, t' thi'' 



INTRODUCTION. 

of absolute sincerity, and a nature unsoured by the 
world. 

But Lamb had his serener moods, and in one of these 
let us part from him. The essay on the Old Benchers of 
the Inner Temple is one of the most varied and beautiful 
pieces of prose that English literature can boast. Emi- 
nently, moreover, does it show us Lamb as the product 
of twi) different ages — the child of the Renascence of the 
sixteenth century and of that of the nineteenth. It is 
as if both Spenser and Wordsworth had laid hands of 
blessing upon his head. This is how he writes of his 
childhood, when the old lawyers paced to and fro before 
him on the Terrace Walk, making up to his childish eyes 
" the mythology of the Temple : "- — 

" In those days I saw Gods, as ' old men covered with 
a mantle,' walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of 
classic idolatry perish — extinct be the fairies and faiiy 
trumpery of legendary fabling — in the heart of childhood 
there will for ever spring up a well of innocent or whole- 
some superstitioL. — the seeds of exaggeration will be busy 
there, and vital, from everyday forms educing the un- 
known and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there 
will be light when the grown world flounders about in 
the darkness of sense and materiality. ' While childhood, 
and while dreams reducing childhood, shall be left, ima- 
gination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to 
fly the earth." 

It is in such passages as these that Lamb shows him- 
self, what indeed he is, the last of the Elizabethans. . " He 
had " learned their great language," and yet he had early 
discovered, with the keen eye of a humorist, how effect- 
ive for his pm-pose was the touch of the pedantic and 
the fantastical from which the noblest of them were not 
wholly free. He was thus able to make even their weak- 
nesses a fresh source of delight, as he dealt with them 
from the vantage ground of two centuries. It may seem 
strange, on first thoughts, that the fashion of Lamb's 
style shoidd not have grown, in its turn, old-fashioned ; 



XIV I INTRODUCTION. 

that, on the contrary, no literary reputation of sixty 
years' standing should seem more certain of its continu- 
ance. But it is not the antique manner — the " self- 
pleasing quaintness " — that has embalmed the substance. 
Kather is there that in the substance which ensures 
immortality for the style. It is one of the rewards of 
purity of heart that, allied with humour, it has the 
promise of perennial charm. " Saint Charles !" exclaimed 
Thackeray one day, as he finished reading once more the 
original of one of Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton. 
There was much in Lamb's habits and manners that we 
do not associate with the saintly ideal ; but patience 
imder suffering and a boundless sympathy hold a large 
place in that ideal, and in Charles Lamb these were not 
found wanting. 

I would add a few words on the kind of information I 
have sought to furnish in my Notes. The impertinence 
of criticism or comment, I hope has been almost entirely 
avoided. But there was a certain waywardness and love 
of practical joking in Charles Lamb that led him often 
to treat matters of fact with deliberate falsification. His 
essays are full of autobiography, but often purposely dis- 
guised, whether to amuse those who were in the secret, 
or to perplex those who were not, it is impossible to say. 
In his own day, therefore, corrections of fact would have 
been either superfluous, or woidd have spoiled the jest ; 
but now that Lamb's contemporaries are all but passed 
away, mu.ch of the hiunour of his method is lost without 
some clue to the many disguises and pei'versions of fact 
with which the essays abound. They are full, for in- 
stance, of references to actual persons, by means of initials 
or other devices. To readers fairly conversant with the 
literary history of Lamb's time, many of these disguises 
are transparent enough ; but for others, notes here and 
there are indispensable. We have an authentic clue to 
most of the initials or asterisks employed in the first series 
of Elia. There is in existence a list of these initials 



INTRODUCTION. 

drawn up by some unknown hand, and filled in with tht 
real names by Lamb himself. Through the kindness of 
its possessor, Mr. Alexander Ireland of Manchester, the 
original of this interesting relic has been in my hands, 
and I can vouch for the handwriting, phraseology, and (it 
may be added) the spelling, being indubitably Lamb's. 

There is much information in these essays, more or 
less disguised, about Lamb's relatives, and I have tried 
to illustrate these points by details of his family history 
for which I had not space in my Memoir of Lamb. In 
a few instances I have permitted myself to repeat some 
sentences from that memoir, where the same set of cir- 
cumstances had to be narrated again. But ajDart from 
changes of names and incidents in the essays, there is in 
Lamb's humour the constant element of a mischievous 
love of hoaxing. He loves nothing so much as to mingle 
romance with reality, so that it shall be difficult for the 
reader to disentangle them. Sometimes he deals with 
fiction as if it were fact ; and sometimes, after supplying 
literal facts, he ends with the insinuation that they are 
fictitious. And besides these deliberate mystifications, 
there is found also in Lamb a certain natm-al incapacity 
for being accm-ate — an inveterate turn for the opposite. 
" What does Elia care for dates 1 " he asks in one of his 
letters, and indeed about accm-acy in any such trifles he 
did not greatly care. In the matter of quotation, as 
already remarked, this is curiously shown. He seldom 
quotes even a hackneyed passage from Shakspeare or 
Milton correctly ; and sometimes he half- remembers a 
passage from some old author, and re-writes it, to suit the 
particular subject he wishes it to illustrate. I have suc- 
ceeded in tracing all but two or three of the many quota- 
tions occurring in the essays, and they serve to show the 
remarkable range and variety of his reading. 

It is generally known that when Lamb collected his 
essays, for publication in book form, from the pages of 
the London and other magazines, he omitted certain 
passages. These I have thought it light, as a rule, not 



xiv ' .'■ INTRODUCTION. 

Ho restore. In most cases the reason for their omission 
y is obvious. They were excrescences or digressions, injur- 

ing the effect of the essay as a whole. In the few in- 
stances in which I have retained a note, or other short 
passage, from the original versions of the essays, I have 
shown that this is the case by enclosing it in brackets. 

I have to thank many friends, and many known to me 
only by their high literary reputation, for courteous and 
ready help in investigating points connected with Lamb's 
writings. Among these I would mention Mr. Alexander 
Ireland of Manchester ; Mr. Eichard Garnett of the 
British Museum ; and, as before, my friend Mr. J. E. 
Davis, counsel to the Commissioners of Police, who has 
given many valuable suggestions and constant assistance 
of other kinds. I must also express my acknowledg- 
ments to Mr. W. J. Jeaffreson, of Folkestone, and to the 
family of the late Mr. Arthur Loveday of Wardington, 
Banbury, for permission to make extracts from unpub- 
lished letters of Lamb's in their possession. 

1883. 



NOTE TO NEW EDITION. 

Several corrections and additions have been made in 
the Notes to the present Edition. 

Jan. 1887. 



PREFACE TO THE LAST ESSAYS. 

BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA. 

This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been 
in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute 
to nature. 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour 
of the thing, if ever there was much in it, was pretty well 
exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence has been 
a tolerable duration for a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I 
have heard objected to my late friend's writings was well 
founded. Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, 
incondite things — villainously pranked in an affected 
array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been 
his, if they had been other than such ; and better it is, 
that a writer should be natiu"al in a self-pleasing quaint- 
ness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should 
be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced 
by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of 
himself, was often true only (historically) of another ; as 
in a former Essay (to save many instances) — ^where under 
the first person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth 
the forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London 
school, far from his friends and connections — in direct 
opposition to his own early history. If it be egotism to 
imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and affec- 
tions of another — making himself many, or reducing many 
unto himself — then is the skilful novelist, who all along 



y PREFACE. 

brings in his hero or heroine, speaking of themselves, the 
greatest egotist of all ; who yet has never, therefore, been 
accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser 
dramatist escape being faulty, who, doubtless under cover 
of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless 
vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own 
story modestly ? 

My late friend was in many respects a singular cha- 
racter. Those who did not like him, hated him ; and 
some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest 
haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern 
what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed 
neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what 
came uppermost. With the severe religionist he Avould 
pass for a free-thinker ; while the other faction set Mm 
down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied 
his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am not 
certain that at all times he quite understood himself. 
He too much affected that dangerous figure — irony. He 
sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal 
hatred. He would internipt the gravest discussion with 
some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant 
in ears that could understand it. Your long and much 
talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined 
to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be 
an orator; and he seemed determined that no one else 
should play that part when he was present. He was 
petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have 
seen him sometimes in what is called good company, but 
where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected 
for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking 
it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether 
senseless, perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped 
his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with 
him ; but nine times out of ten he contrived by this de- 
vice to send away a whole company his enemies. His 
conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his hajj- 
piest ivipromptiis had the appearance of effort. He has 



PREFACE. 

been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was 
but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. 
He chose his companions for some individuality of cha- 
racter which they manifested. Hence, not many persons 
of science, and few professed literati, were of his coun- 
cils. They were, for the most part, persons of an un- 
certain fortune ; and, as to such people commonly nothing 
is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though 
moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a 
great miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake. His 
intimados, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a 
ragged regiment. He found them floating on the siu-face 
of society ; and the colour, or something else, in the weed 
pleased him. The burrs stuck to him — ^but they were 
good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly 
cared for the society of what are called good people. If 
any of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to 
arise) he could not help it. When he has been remon- 
strated with for not making more concessions to the feel- 
ings of good people, he would retort by asking, what one 
point did these good people ever concede to him ? He 
was temperate in his meals and diversions, but always 
kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the 
use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little ex- 
cessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. 
Marry — as the friendly vapom* ascended, how his prattle 
would curl up sometimes with it ! the ligaments which 
tongue-tied him were loosened, and the stammerer pro- 
ceeded a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice 
that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning 
to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He 
felt the approaches of age ; and while he pretended to 
cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to bind 
him Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he ex- 
pressed himself with a pettishness, which I thought un- 
worthy of him. In our walks about his suburban retreat 
(as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging 



PREFACE. 

y 

tO a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curt- 
seyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. 
" They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered 
earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, 
of looking like anything important and parochial. He 
thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily. 
He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave 
or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the 
advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded 
always, while it was possible, with people younger than 
himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but 
was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged 
behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. 
The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoidders. 
The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he 
resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weak- 
nesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to expli- 
cate some of his writings. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST SERIES. 

PAGE 

The Sottth-Sea House ... .1 

Oxford in the Vacation . . . .10 

Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago ; . 17 

The Two Eaces of Men . . . , .31 

New Year's Eve . . . . .37 

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist . . .44 

A Chapter on Ears . . . . .52 

All Fools' Day . . . . . .58 

A Quakers' Meeting . . . . .62 

The Old and the New Schoolmaster . . .67 

Imperfect Sympathies . . . . .76 

Witches and other Night Fears . . .85 

Valentine's Day . . . . ' . .93 

My Relations . . . . . .96 

Mackery End in Hertfordshire . . .103 

My First Play . . . . . .108 

Modern Gallantry . . . . .113 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple . . 118 

Grace Before Meat . . . . • 130 



XXIV 



CONTENTS. 



Dkeam-Children ; A Reverie . 

--iJiSTANT COEKESPONDENTS 

The Peaise of Chimney-Sweepeks . "^ 

A Complaint op the Decay of Beggars in the 

Metropolis 
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 
A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of 

Married People .... 
On Some of the Old Actors . . / . 

On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century 
On the Acting of Munden 



LAST ESSA YS. 

BlAKESMOOR in H SHIRE 

j/^ooR Relations . 

Detached Thoughts on Books and Eeading 

Stage Illusion . 

To the Shade of Elliston 

Ellistoniana 

The Old Margate Hoy . 

The Convalescent 

Sanity of True Genius , 

Captain Jackson 

The Superannuated Man 

The Genteel Style in Writing 

Barbara S^ . 



CONTENTS. 

The Tombs in the Abbey 

Amicus Redivivus 

Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney . 

Newspapees Thirty-Five Years Ago . 

Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the 

Productions of Modern Art 
The Wedding .... 
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age 
Old China .... 

The Child Angel ; A Dream 
Confessions of a Drunkard 
Popular Fallacies : 

I. That a Bully is always a Coward 
II. That Ill-Gotten Gain never prospers 
|~ III. That a Man must not laugh at his own 
Jest 

IV. That Such a one shows his Breeding. — 
That it is easy to perceive he is no 
Gentleman .... 

V. That the Poor copy the Vices of the Rich 
VI. That Enough is as good as a Feast 
VII. Of Two Disputants, the warmest is gen- 
erally IN the wrong 
VIII. That Verbal Allusions are not Wit, be- 
cause they will not bear a Translation 
IX. That the Worst Puns are the Best 
X. That Handsome is that Handsome does . 



XXV 

PAGE 

278 
281 
286 
295 

303 
315 
321 
327 
333 
336 

346 
347 

347 



348 
349 
350 

351 

352 
353 
355 



XXVI CONTENTS. 

PAGK 

Popular Fallacies : 

XI. That we must not look a Gift Horse in 

THE Mouth ..... 358 
XII. That Home is Home though it is never so 

Homely ..... 360 

XIII. That you must love Me and love my Dog 365 

XIV. That we should rise with the Lark . 369 
XV. That we should lie down with the Lamb 371 

XVI. That a Sulky Temper is a Misfortune . 373 

Notes ....... 377 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



THE SOUTH -SEA HOUSE. 

Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou hast 
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou 
art a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to 
secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or soi^ .-. other 
thy subiuban retreat northerly — didst thou never observe 
a melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, 
to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishops- 
gate 1 I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent 
portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave 
coiu-t, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of 
goers-in or comers-out — a desolation something like Bal- 
clutha's.^ 

This was once a house of trade — a centre of busy 
interests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick 
pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still 
kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are 
still to be seen stately porticoes ; imposing staircases, 
oflBces roomy as the state apartments in palaces — de- 
serted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; 
the still more sacred interiors of court and committee 
rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers — 
directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a 
dead dividend) at long worm-eaten tables, that have been 
mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, support- 

* I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — 

OSSIAN. 

e B 



2 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ing massy silver inkstands long since dry ; — tlie oaken 
wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and 
sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs 
of the Brunswick dynasty ; — huge charts, which subse- 
quent discoveries have antiquated ; — dusty maps of 
Mexico, dim as dreams, and soundings of the Bay of 
Panama ! The long passages hung with buckets, appended, 
in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, 
short of the last, conflagration : with vast ranges of 
cellarage imder all, where dollars and pieces of eight once 
lay, an " unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced 
his solitary heart withal — long since dissipated, or scat- 
tered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous 
Bubble. 

Such is the South-Sea House. At least such it was 
forty years ago, when I knew it — a magnificent relic ! 
"What alterations may have been made in it since, I have 
had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for 
granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated 
the face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this 
time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then 
battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have 
rested from their depredations, but other light generations 
have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their single 
and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated 
(a superfoetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom 
used to be disturbed, save by some ciu:ious finger, now 
and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping 
•in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed curiosity, 
seeking to imveil some of the mysteries of that tremen- 
dous HOAX, whose extent the petty peculators of om- day 
look back upon with the same expression of incredulous 
admu-ation and hopeless ambition of rivalry as would 
become the puny face of modern conspiracy contemplating 
the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot. 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and 
destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a 
memorial ! 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 3 

Situated, as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and 
living commerce — amid the fret and fever of speculation 
— with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House 
about thee, in the heyday of present prosperity, with their 
important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor 
neighbour out of business — to the idle and merely con- 
templative — to such as me, old house ! there is a charm 
in thy quiet : — a cessation — a coolness from business — an 
indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! With 
what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and 
courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past : — the shade 
of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would 
flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and account- 
ants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy 
great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of 
the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves — 
with their old fantastic flo\u:ishes and decorative rubric 
interlacings — their sums in triple columniations, set down 
with formal superfluity of ciphers — with pious sentences 
at the beginning, without which our religious ancestors 
never ventured to open a book of business, or bill of 
lading — the costly vellmu covers of some of them almost 
persuading us that we are got into some better library — 
are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I can look 
upon these defunct dragons with complacency. Thy 
heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors 
had everything on a larger scale than we have hearts for) 
are as good as anything from Herculaneum. The poimce- 
boxes of our days have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea 
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very 
different from those in the public offices that I have had 
to do with since. They partook of the genius of the 
place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit 
of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they 
had not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative 
turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned 



4 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

before ; humourists, for they were of all descriptions ; 
and, not having been brought together in early life (which 
has a tendency to assimilate the members of corporate 
bodies to each other), but, for the most part, placed in 
this house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried 
into it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if 
I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they 
formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-mon- 
astery. Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more 
for show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — 
and not a few among them had arrived at considerable 
proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro- 
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion of 
his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a worthy, 
sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, 
powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remem- 
ber to have seen in caricatures of what were termed, in 
my young days, Maccaronies. He was the last of that 
race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter 
all the forenoon, I think I see him making up his cash 
(as they call it) with tremidous fingers, as if he feared 
every one about him was a defaulter ; in his hypochondry, 
ready to imagine himself one ; haunted, at least, with the 
idea of the possibility of his becoming one : his tristful 
visage clearing up a httle over his roast neck of veal at 
Anderton's at two (where his pictiu-e still hangs, taken 
a little before his death by desire of the master of the 
coffee-house which he had frequented for the last five-and- 
twenty years), but not attaining the meridian of its 
animation till evening brought on the hour of tea and 
visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap 
at the door with the stroke of the clock annoimcing six, 
was a topic of never-failing mirth in the families which 
this dear old bachelor gladdened with his presence. Then 
was his forte, his glorified hour ! How would he chirp 
and expand over a muffin ! How would he dilate into 
secret history ! His countryman. Pennant himself, in 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 5 

particular, could not be more eloquent than he in relation 
to old and new London — the site of old theatres, chiu-ches, 
streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's pond stood — 
the Mulberry-gardens — and the Conduit in Cheap — with 
many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal tradition, 
of those grotesque figures which Hogarth has immortalized 
in his picture of Noon — the worthy descendants of those 
heft)ic confessors, who, flying to this country from the 
wrath of Louis the Fom'teenth and his dragoons, kept 
alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering obscurities 
of Hog Lane and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had 
the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken 
him for one, had you met him in one of the passages 
leading to "Westminster Hall. By stoop, I mean that 
gentle bending of the body forwards, which, in great men, 
must be supposed to be the effect of an habitual con- 
descending attention to the applications of their inferiors. 
While he held you in converse, you felt strained to the 
height in the colloquy. The conference over, you were 
at leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance of the 
pretensions which had just awed you. His intellect was 
of the shallowest order. It did not reach to a saw or a 
proverb. His mind was in its original state of white 
paper. A sucking babe might have posed him. What 
was it then 1 Was he rich ? Alas, no ! Thomas Tame 
was very poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly 
gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all times 
within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was 
evident she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but in its 
veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some 
labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly imder- 
stood, — much less can explain with any heraldic certainty 
at this time of day,- — to the illustrious but unfortunate 
house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's 
stoop. This was the thought — the sentiment — the bright 
solitary star of your lives, — ye mild and happy pair,-^ 
which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the 



6 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

obscurity of your station ! This was to you instead of 
riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments : 
and it was worth them all together. You insulted none 
with it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive 
armour only, no insult likewise could reach you through 
it. Decus et solamen. 

Of qmte another stamp was the then accoimtant, John 
Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good 
truth cared one fig about the matter. He " thought an 
accountant the greatest character in the world, and him- 
self the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not 
without his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. 
He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean 
lyre. He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abomi- 
nably. His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle 
Street, which, without anything very substantial appended 
to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of him- 
self that lived in them (I know not who is the occupier 
of them now ^), resounded fortnightly to the notes of a 
concert of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors would have 
called them, culled from club-rooms, and orchestras — 
chorus singers — first and second violoncellos — double 
basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton and 
drank his punch and praised his ear. He sat like Lord 
Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite 
another sort of creatiu-e. Thence all ideas, that were 
purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak 
of anything romantic without rebuke. Pohtics were ex- 
cluded. A newspaper was thought too refined and 
abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in writing 
off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance 
in the company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the 

^ [I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them 
is a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some 
choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which I 
mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same 
time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr. 
Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative 
collector. ] 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 7 

balance of last year in the sum of ,£25 : 1 : 6) occupied 
his days and nights for a month previous. Not that Tipp 
was blind to the deadness of things (as they called them 
in the city) in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a 
return of the old stirring days when South- Sea hopes 
were young (he was indeed equal to the wielding of any 
the most intricate accounts of the most flourishing com- 
pany in these or those days) : but to a genuine accountant 
the difference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional 
farthing is as dear to his heart as the thousands which 
stand before it. He is the true actor, who, whether his 
part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with like 
intensity. With Tipp form was everything. His life 
was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. 
His pen was not less erring than his heart. He made 
the best executor in the world : he was plagued with 
incessant executorships accordingly, which excited his 
spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would 
swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, whose rights 
he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of the 
dying hand that commended their interests to his pro- 
tection. With all this there was about him a sort of 
timidity (his few enemies used to give it a worse name) 
— a something which, in reverence to the dead, we will 
place, if you please, a little on this side of the heroic. 
Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp 
with a sufficient measure of the principle of self-preserva- 
tion. There is a cowardice which we do not despise, 
because it has nothing base or treacherous in its elements ; 
it betrays itself, not you : it is mere temperament ; the 
absence of the romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a 
lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, " greatly 
find quarrel in a straw," when some supposed honour is 
at stake. Tipp never moimted the box of a stage-coach 
in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a balcony ; or 
walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked down a 
precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water-party ; 
or woidd willingly let you go if he could have helped it : 



8 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

neither was it recorded of him, that for Mere, or for 
intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 

Whom next shiall we summon from the dusty dead, 
in whom common qualities become uncommon 1 Can I 
forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of 
letters, the author, of the South-Sea House % who never 
enteredst thy ofl&ce in a morning or quittedst it m mid- 
day (what didst thou in an office ?) without some quirk 
that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now 
extinct, or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I 
had the good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, 
not three days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigram- 
matic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these 
fastidious days — thy topics are staled by the "new-born 
gauds " of the time : — but great thou used to be in Public 
Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shelburne, 
and Eockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, 
and the war which ended in the tearing from Great 
Britain her rebellious colonies, — and Keppel, and "Wilkes, 
and Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and 
Richmond — and such small politics. 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstre- 
perous, was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was 
descended, — not in a right line, reader (for his lineal 
pretensions, like his personal, favom'ed a little of the 
sinister bend) — from the Plumers of Hertfordshu-e. So 
tradition gave him out ; and certain family features not 
a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter 
Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, 
and visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He 
was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, 
who has represented the county in so many successive 
parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. 
Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was 
the same who was smnmoned before the House of Com- 
mons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess of 
Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of 
Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 9 

certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the 
rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, 
with all gentleness, insinuated. But besides his family- 
pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang 
gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, 

child-like, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely 

whi^ering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones 
worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by 
Amiens to the banished duke, which proclaims the winter 
wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy 
sire was old smiy M — • — , the unapproachable church- 
vs^arden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when 
he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering 
winter : — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should 
have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise 
up, but they must be mine in private : — already I have 
fooled the reader to the top of his bent ; else could I 
omit that strange creatine Woollett, who existed in trying 
the question, and bought litigations ! — and still stranger, 
inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton 
might have deduced the law of gravitation. How pro- 
foundly would he nib a pen — wdth what deliberation 
would he wet a wafer ! — — 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling 
fast over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn 
mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this 
while — peradventiu'e the very names, which I have sum- 
moned up before thee, are fantastic — insubstantial — like 
Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece : 

Be satisfied that something answering to them has had 
a being. Their importance is from the past. 



10 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this 
article — as the very connoisseur in prints, with cursory 
eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not), 
never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, 
before he pronoimces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or 
a WooUet — methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who 
is Mia ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some 
half-forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an 
old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubt- 
less you have already set me down in your mind as one 
of the self-same college — a votary of the desk — a notched 
and cropt scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as 
certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. 

Well, I do agnise something of the sort. I confess 
that it is my hxmaour, my fancy — in the fore-part of 
the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires 
some relaxation (and none better than such as at first 
sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — 
to while away some good hours of my time in the con- 
templation of indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, 
flowered or otherwise. In the first place * * * 
and then it sends you home with such increased appetite 
to your books ****** 

not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers 
of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and 
naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so 
that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some 
sort, the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, 
that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks 
of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease 
over the flowery carpet -ground of a midnight disserta- 
tion. — It feels its promotion. * * * * 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 11 

So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of 
Mia is very little, if at all, compromised in the conde- 
scension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commo- 
dities incidental to the life of a public office, I would 
be thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper 
might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I 
must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the 
abolition, and doing-away-with altogether, of those con- 
solatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through 
the four seasons, — the red-letter days, now become, to all 
intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul, 
and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back 
as when I was at school at Christ's. I remember their 
effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer 
Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy 
Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the 
famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. — I honoured them all, 
and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot — 
so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred : — 
only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the 
better Jude with Simon — clubbing (as it were) their 
sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy -day 
between them — as an economy unworthy of the dis- 
pensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a 
clerk's life — " far off" their coming shone."- — I was as 
good as an almanac in those days. I coiild have told 
you such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the week 
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical 
infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. 
Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let 
me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil 
superiors, who have judged the further observation of 
these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in 



12 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holi- 
nesses the Bishoi^s had, in decency, been first sounded — 
but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the man 
to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical authority 
— I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher 
— though at present in the thick of their books, here in 
the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty 
Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his 
young years of the sweet food of academic institution, 
nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks 
at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, 
too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. 
Here I can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself 
of what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted 
ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise 
at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In 
moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When 
the peacock vein rises, I strut a Geintleman Commoner. 
In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed 
I do not think I am much imlike that respectable 
character. I have seen yoiu- dim-eyed vergers, and bed- 
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a cmisy, as I pass, 
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go 
about in black, which favoiu-s the notion. Only in 
Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to 
pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — 
the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The 
halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip 
in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or 
noble or royal Benefactress (that shoidd have been ours) 
whose portrait seems to smile upon their over -looked 
beadsman, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to 
take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and sculleries, 
redolent of antique hospitality : the immense caves of 
kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses ; ovens whose 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 13 

first pies were baked four centuries ago ; and spits which 
have cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister 
among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his 
imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. 

Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou 1 
that, being nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, 
thou wert not antiquity — then thovi wert nothing, 
but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look 
back to with blind veneration ; thou thyself being to thy- 
self flat, jejune, modern ! What mystery Im'ks in this 
retroversion ? or what half Januses ^ are we, that cannot 
look forward with the same idolatry with which we for 
ever revert ! The mighty future is as nothing, being 
everything ! the past is everything, being nothing ! 

What were thy dark ages ? Siu'ely the sun rose as 
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in 
the morning ? Why is it we can never hear mention of 
them without an accompanying feeling, as though a pal- 
pable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that 
our ancestors wandered to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most 
arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering 
learning, thy shelves 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as 
though all the souls of all the writers, that have be- 
queathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing 
here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not 
want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. 
I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learn- 
ing, walking amid their foliage ; and the odour of their 
old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom 
of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy 
orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose 

of MSS. Those varice lectiones, so tempting to the more 

erudite palates, do but distm-b and unsettle my faith. 

I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three 

^ Januses of one face. — Sm Thomas Brownk. 



14 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave 
these curiosities to Porson, and to Gr. D. — whom, by the 
way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, 
rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at 
Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. 
He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. 
I longed to new-coat him in russia, and assign him his 
place. He might have mustered for a taU Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. 
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I 
apprehend, is consumed in journeys between them and 
Clifford's Inn — where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he 
has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incon- 
gruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, 
promoters, vermin of the law, among whom he sits, " in 
calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the law pierce 
him not — the winds of litigation blow over his humble 
chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he 
passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none 
thinks of offering violence or injustice to him — you woidd 
as soon " strike an abstract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of 
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter 
connected with the two Universities • and has lately lit 

upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to , by 

which he hopes to settle some disputed points — particu- 
larly that long controversy between them as to priority 
of foundation. The ardour with which he engages in 
these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all 

the encouragement it deserved, either here or at . 

Your caputs, and heads of colleges, care less than any- 
body else about these questions. — Contented to suck the 
milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without inquii'ing 
into the venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold 
such curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. They 
have their good glebe lands in manu, and care not much 
to rake into the title-deeds. I gather at least so much 
from other sources, for D. is not a man to complain. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 15 

D. started like an unbroken heifer, when I interrupted 
him, A priori it was not very probable that we should 
have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, 
had I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in 
Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a pro- 
voking short-sightedness (the effect of late studies and 
watchings at the midnight oil) D. is the most absent of 
men. He made a call the other morning at our friend 
M.'s in Bedford Square • and, finding nobody at home, 
was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and ink, 
with great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name 
in the book — which ordinarily lies about in such places, 
to record the failiu-es of the untimely or tmfortunate 
visitor — and takes his leave with many ceremonies, and 
professions of regret. Some two or three hours after, 
his walking destinies retiuned him into the same neigh- 
bourhood again, and again the quiet image of the fireside 
circle at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, 
with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irresistibly on his 
fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they were 
"certainly not to return from the country before that 
day week "), and disappointed a second time, inquires for 
pen and paper as 'before : again the book is brought, and 
in the line just above that in which he is about to print 
his second name (his re-script) — his first name (scarce 
dry) looks out upon him like another Sosia, or as if a 
man should suddenly encounter his own duplicate ! — The 
effect may be conceived. D. made many a good resolu- 
tion against any such lapses in future. I hope he will 
not keep them too rigorously. 

For with G. D. — ^to be absent from the body, is some- 
times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the 
Lord. At the very time when, personally encountering 

thee, he passes on with no recognition- or, being 

stopped, starts like a thing surprised — at that moment, 
Eeader, he is on Momit Tabor — or Parnassus — or co- 
sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, framing 
"immortal commonwealths" — devising some plan of 



16 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

amelioration to thy country, or thy species perad- 

ventiire meditating some individual kindness or coiu'tesy, 
to be done to thee thyself, the returning consciousness of 
which made him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded 
personal presence. 

[D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in 
the house of " pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish 
fanatic schoolmaster at * * * , at a salary of eight pounds 
per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, 
he never received above half in all the laborious years he 
served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when 
poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes 
compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint 
at arrears. Dr. * * * would take no immediate notice, but 
after supper, when the school was called together to even- 
song, he would never fail to introduce some instructive 
homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart 
occasioned through the desire of them — ending with 
" Lord, keep Thy servants, above all things, from the 
heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us 
therewithal be content. Give me Agur's wish" — and the 
like — which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine 
full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor D. 
was a receipt in fall for that quarter's demand at least. 

And D. has been under- working for himself ever since ; 
— -drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, 
— -wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the 
classics, and in those imostentatious but solid services to 
learning which commonly fall to the lot of laborious 
scholars, who have not the heart to sell themselves to the 
best advantage. He has published poems, which do not 
sell, because their character is imobtrusive, like his own, 
and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient 
literature to know what the popular mark in poetry is, 
even if he could have hit it. And, therefore, his verses 
are properly, what he terms them, crotchets ; voluntaries ; 
odes to liberty and spring ; effusions ; little tributes and 
offerings, left behind him upon tables and window-seats 



Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago. 17 

at parting from friends' houses ; and from all the inns of 
hospitality, where he has been coui-teoixsly (or but toler- 
ably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of kindness 
halt a little beliind the strong lines in fashion in this 
excitement-loving age, his prose is the best of the sort in 
the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own 
healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of con- 
versation.] 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in 
such places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He 
is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or 
Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him " better 
than all the waters of Damascus." On the Muses' hill 
he is happy, and good, as one of the Shepherds on the 
Delectable Mountains ; and when he goes about with 
you to show you the halls and colleges, you think you 
have with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful. 



CHEIST'S HOSPITAL 

FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 

In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two since, 
I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school, ^ such as it 
was, or now appears to him to have been, between the 
years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my 
own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding with 
his ; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm 
for the cloisters, I think he lias contrived to bring to- 
gether whatever can be said in praise of them, dropping 
all the other side of the argument most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that 
he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of 
his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and 
were near at hand ; and he had the privilege of going to 

^ Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 
C 



18 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

see them, almost as often as he wished, through some 
invidious distinction, which was denied to us. The pre- 
sent worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain 
how that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a 
morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a 
penny loaf — our cn(,g — moistened with attenuated small 
beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern 
jack it was poured from. Our Monday's milk ponitch, 
blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse 
and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of " ex- 
traordinary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the 
Temple. The "Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat 
less repugnant (we had three banyan to four meat days in 
the week) — was endeared to his palate with a Imnp of 
double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make it go down 
the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of 
our half-2nc1cled Sundays, or qmte fresh boiled beef on 
Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable mari- 
golds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty 
mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten -roasted or 
rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our 
appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal 
proportion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the 
more tempting griskin (exotics unknown to om- palates), 
cooked in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and 
brought him daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember 
the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squat- 
ting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the clois- 
ters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those 
cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite); and 
the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There 
was love for the bringer ; shame for the thing brought, 
and the manner of its bringing ; sympathy for those who 
were too many to share in it ; and, at top of all, hunger 
(eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant, breaking 
down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a 
troubling over-consciousness. 



Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago. 19 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and tliose 
who should care for me, were far away. Those few 
acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon as 
being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced 
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my 
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. 
They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought 
them few enough ; and, one after another, they all failed 
me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred play- 
mates. 

the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early 
homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have to- 
wards it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, 
would my native town (far in the west) come back, with 
its church, and trees, and faces ! How I would wake 
weeping, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon 
sweet Calne in Wiltshire ! 

To this late horn- of my life, I trace impressions left 
by the recollection of those friendless holidays. The long 
warm days of summer never retm-n but they bring with 
them a gloom from the haunting memory of those ivhole- 
day leaves, when, by some strange arrangement, we were 
turned out, for the live-long day, upon oirr own hands, 
whether we had friends to go to, or none. I remember 
those bathing-excursions to the New River, which L. 
recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for 
he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such 
water-pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into 
the fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ; 
and wanton like yomig dace in the streams ; getting us 
appetites for noon, which those of us that were penniless 
(our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not 
the means of allaying — while the cattle, and the birds, 
and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we had nothing 
to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the day, and 
the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, 
setting a keener edge upon them ! — How faint and lan- 
guid, finally, we would return, towards night-fall, to our 



20 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

desired morsel, half- rejoicing, half- reluctant, that the 
hours of our uneasy liberty had expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling 
about the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of 
jMnt shops, to extract a little amusement ; or haply, as a 
last resort, in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a fifty- 
times repeated visit (where om- individual faces shoidd be as 
well known to the warden as those of his own charges) 
to the Lions in the Tower — to whose lev^e, by courtesy 
immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission, 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented 
us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal 
roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of 
being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and 
was an effectual screen to him against the severity of 
masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppres- 
sions of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to 
recollection. I have been called out of my bed, and ivaked 
for the 2Mrpose, in the coldest winter nights — and this not 
once, but night after night — in my shirt, to receive the 
discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, 
because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has been 
any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the 
six last beds in the dormitory, where the yoimgest children 
of us slept, answerable for an offence they neither dared to 
commit, nor had the power to hinder. — The same exe- 
crable tyranny drove the younger part of us from the fires, 
when our feet were perishing with snow ; and, under the 
cruellest penalties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of 
water, when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered 
with the season and the day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned in after days, 

was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. 
(Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the 
planter of that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, or 
St. Kitts, — some few years since ? My friend Tobin was 
the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) 
This petty Kero actually branded a boy, who had offended 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL PIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 21 

him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of ns, 
with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, 
to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, 
with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young 
flame of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep 
upon the leads of the ward, as they called our dormitories. 
This game went on for better than a week, till the 
foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must cry roast 
meat — happier than Caligula's minion, could he have kept 
his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his 
species in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the ful- 
ness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim 
his good fortune to the world below ; and, laying out his 
simple throat, blew such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling 
down the walls of his own Jericho) set concealment any 
longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with certain 
attentions, to Smithfield; but I never imderstood that 
the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. This 
Avas in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 

Under the same facile administration, can L. have for- 
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to 
carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables, 
one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful 
matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our 
dinners ? These things were daily practised in that 
magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, 
we presume) praises so highly for the grand paintings 
" by Verrio and others," with which it is " hung rotmd 
and adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat 
boys in pictures was, at that time, I believe, little con- 
solatory to him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better 
part of our provisions carried away before our faces by 
harpies ; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan in the 
hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture, 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, 
or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some 



22 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grate- 
ful to young palates (children are universally fat-haters), 
and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, icnsalted, are detest- 
able. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a goule, 

and held in equal detestation. suffered under the 

imputation : 

.... 'Twas said 
He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up 
the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice 
fragments, you may credit me) — and, in an especial 
manner, these disreputable morsels, which he would convey 
away, and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bed- 
side. None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that 
he privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable. 
Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to 
carry out of the boimds a large blue check handkerchief, 
full of something. This then must be the acciu-sed thing. 
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could 
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This 
belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None 
spake to him. No one would play with him. He was 
excommunicated ; put out of the pale of the school- He 
was too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he imderwent 
every mode of that negative punishment, which is more 
grievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. At 
length he was observed by two of his schoolfellows, who 
were determined to get at the secret, and had traced him 
one leave-day for that piu-pose, to enter a large worn-out 
building, such as there exist specimens of in Chancery 
Lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism, with 
open door, and a common staircase. After him they silently 
slunk in, and followed by stealth up foiu- flights, and saw 
him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged 
Avoman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into 
certainty. , The informers had secured their victim. They 



Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago. 23 

had him in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, 
and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, 
the then steward (for this happened a little after my time), 
with that patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, 
determined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to 
sentence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, 
the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned 

out to be the parents of , an honest couple come to 

decay,— whom this seasonable supply had, in all proba- 
bility, saved from mendicancy : and that this young stork, 
at the expense of his own good name, had all this while 
been only feeding the old birds ! — The governors on this 
occasion, much to their honour, voted a present relief to the 

family of , and presented him with a silver medal. 

The lesson which the steward read upon rash judgment, 

on the occasion of publicly delivering the medal to • , 

I believe, would not be lost upon his auditory. — I had 

left school then, but I well remember • . He was a 

tall, shambling youth, with a cast in his eye, not at all 
calculated to conciliate hostile prejudices. I have since 
seen him carrying a baker's basket. I think I heard he 
did not do quite so well by himself as he had done by 
the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in 
fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue 
clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural 
terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely turned 
of seven ; and had only read of such things in books, or 
seen them but in dreams, I was told he had run away. 
This was the punishment for the first offence. — As a novice 
I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were 
little, square. Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at 
his length upon straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think, 
was afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, let in 
askance, from a prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read 
by. Here the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, 
without sight of any but the porter who brought him his 
bread and water — who might not speak to him ; — or of the 



24 THE ESSAYS OE ELIA. 

beadle, who came twice a week to call liim out to receive 
his periodical chastisement, which was almost welcome, 
because it separated him for a brief interval from solitude : 
—and here he was shut up by himself of nights^ out of the 
reach of any sound, to suffer whatever horrors the weak 
nerves, and superstition incident to his time of life, might 
subject him to.^ This was the penalty for the second 
offence. Wouldst thou like. Reader, to see what became of 
him in the next degree % 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible^ was 
brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in 
uncouth and most appalling attire, all trace of his late 
" watchet-weeds " carefully effaced, he was exposed in a 
jacket, resembling those which London lamphghters for- 
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of 
this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it 
could have anticipated. With his pale and frightened 
features, it was as if some of those disfigiu'ements in Dante 
had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought 
into the hall {L.'s favourite state-room), where awaited him 
the whole number of his schoolfellows, whose joint lessons 
and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awfiil 
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of 
the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the 
occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, because 
never but in these extremities visible. These were gov- 
ernors ; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always 
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Siipplicia ; not 
to mitigate (so at least we maderstood it), but to enforce 
the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter 
Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, 
when the beadle tm'ning rather pale, a glass of brandy was 

■•• One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accord- 
ingly, at length convinced the governors of the imi^olicy of this 
part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was 
dispensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout 
of Howard's brain ; for which (saving the reverence due to Holy 
Paul) methinks I could willingly spit upon his statue. 



Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago. 25 

ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging 
was, after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The 
lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We 
were generally too faint with attending to the previous 
disgusting circumstances to make accurate report with 
our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. 
Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. 
After scourging, he was made over, in his San Benito, to 
his friends, if he had any (but commonly such poor run- 
agates were friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to 
enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted 
to him on the outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often 
as to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had 
plenty of exercise and recreation after school hom-s ; and, 
for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier than 
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools 
were held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only 
divided their bounds. Thek character was as different as 
that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. 
The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master, but the 
Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the 
apartment, of which I had the good fortmie to be a mem- 
ber. , We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and 
did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We 
carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any 
trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting 
through the verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting 
all that we had learned about them. There was now and 
then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not 
learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to 
disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Field never used 
the rod ; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great 
good will — holding it " like a dancer." It looked in his 
hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of autho- 
rity; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a 
good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, 
nor perhaps set any great consideration ixpon the value of 



26 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, but 
often staid away whole days from us ; and when he came, 
it made no difference to us — he had his private room to 
retire to, the short time he staid, to be out of the soimd 
of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had 
classics of our own, without being beholden to " insolent 
Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among us — 
Peter Wilkins — The Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert 
Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-coat Boy — and the like. Or we 
cultivated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ; 
making little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those in- 
genious parentheses, called cat-cradles; or making dry peas 
to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying the art 
military over that laudable game " French and English," 
and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time — 
mixing the useful with the agreeable — as would have 
made the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to 
have seen us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest 
divines who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentle- 
man, the scholar, and the Christian ; but, I know not 
how, the first ingredient is generally foimd to be the pre- 
dominating dose in the composition. He was engaged in 
gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some episcopal 
levde, when he should have been attending upon us. He 
had for many years the classical charge of a himdred child- 
ren, during the four or five first years of their education ; 
and his very highest form seldom proceeded further than 
two or three of the introductory fables of Phaedrus. How 
things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, 
who was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, 
always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in 
a province not strictly his own. I have not been without 
my suspicions, that he was not altogether displeased at 
the contrast we presented to his end of the school. We 
were a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would 
sometimes, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of 
the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, observe 



chkist's hospital five and thirty years ago. 27 

to one of his upper boys, " how neat and fresh the twigs 
looked." While his pale students were battering their 
brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep 
as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying our- 
selves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little 
into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but 
the more reconcile us to oiu- lot. His thunders rolled 
innocuous for us ; his storms came near, but never touched 
us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry.^ His boys turned out the 
better scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage in 
temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without some- 
thing of terror allaying their gratitude ; the remembrance 
of Field comes back with all the soothing images of 
indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like jjlay, and 
innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself 
a "playing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of 
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to under- 
stand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds 
of the Uhdantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was 
a rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbar- 
ism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to 
those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. ^ 
— He would laugh — ay, and heartily — but then it must 

he at Flaccus's quibble abou.t Bex or at the t7istis 

severitas in vidtu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — 
thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have 
had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. — He had two 

■^ Cowley. 

^ In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
Wliile the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, wortli 
a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more 
flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under 
the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 
chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, 
but the town did not give it their sanction. — B. used to say of it, 
in a way of half-compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical 
for representation. 



28 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The one 
serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. 
The other, an old discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, de- 
noting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the school, 
when he made his morning appearance in his passy, or 
passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. — J. B. had 
a heavy hand, I have known him double his knotty fist 
at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry 
upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you presume to set your 
wits at me ?" — Nothing was more common than to see 
him make a headlong entry into the school-room, from his 
inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eye, singling 
out a lad, roar out, " Od's my life, sirrah" (his favourite 
adjuration), " I have a great mind to whip you," — then, 
with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his 
lair — and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during 
which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context) 
drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, 
as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory 
yell — '^ and J will too." — In his gentler moods, when 
the rabidus fitror was assuaged, he had resort to an in- 
genious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to him- 
self, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the 
same time ; a paragraph and a lash between ; which in 
those times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a 
height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated 
to impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser 
graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall 

ineffectual from his hand — when droll squinting W 

having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk 
to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed 
it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that 
he did not know that the thing had been foreivarned. This 
exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral 
or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all 
who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that 
remission was unavoidable. 



Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago. 29 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. 
Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronoimced a more in- 
telligible and ample encomimn on them. The author of 
the Cormtry Spectator doubts not to compare him with 
the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dis- 
miss him better than with the pious ejaculation of C — 
when he heard that his old master was on his death-bed : 
" Poof J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and may 
he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and 
wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary in- 
firmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. 
— First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, 
kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and 

inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. What an 

edifying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those 
who remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors ! 
— You never met the one by chance in the street without 
a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the almost 
immediate subappearance of the other. Generally arm- 
in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for each other 
the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in 
advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, the other 
was not long in discovering that it suited him to lay down 
the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find 
the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen 
helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amicitid, or some 
tale of Antique Friendship, which the young heart even 
then was burning to anticipate ! — Co-Grecian with S. was 

Th , who has since executed with ability various 

diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Th 

was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with 
raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him 
(now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in 
his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic ; 
and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Treatise 
on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. — M. is said to bear 
his mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare 



30 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite 
as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be 
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo- Asiatic 
diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the 
church which those fathers watered. The manners of M^ 
at school, though firm, were mild and unassuming. — Next 
to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the 
Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize 
Poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. — Then followed poor 
S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. 

Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day- 
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery coliunn before 
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have 
I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, 
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro- 
portion between the s'peecli and the garh of the yoimg 
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deej} and sweet 
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for 
even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or 
Pindar while the walls of the old Grey Friars re- 
echoed to the accents of the insjnred charity-boy I — Many 
were the "wit-combats" (to dally awhile with the words 

of old Fuller), between him and 0. V. Le G , " which 

two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English 
man of war : Master Coleridge, like the former, was built 
far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances, 
C. V. L., with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, 
but lighter in sailing, could turn with all times, tack 
about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness 
of his wit and invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, 
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, 
with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 31 

shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs ; 
or the anticipation of some more -material, and peradven- 
tnre practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, 
with that beautiful comitenance, with which (for thou 
wert the Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of 
thy matiu-er waggery, thou didst disarm the wi-ath of 
infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, 
turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy 

angel-look, exchanged the half-formed terrible " hi ," 

for a gentler greeting — " hless thy handsome face ! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 

friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who 

impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by 
too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of endm'ing the 
slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in oiu* seats 
of learning — exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; 
perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Sala- 
manca : — Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; 

F , dogged, faithful, anticiijative of insult, warm- 
hearted, with something of the old Roman height about 
him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of 

Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries 

— and both my good friends still — close the catalogue of 
Grecians in my time. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 

The human species, according to the best theory I can 
form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men %vho 
borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original 
diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classi- 
fications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black 
men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, " Parthians, 
and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do natiu-ally 
fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. 



32 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

The infinite superiority of the former, which I chose to 
designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, 
port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter 
are born degraded. " He shall serve his brethren." 
There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean 
and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, 
generous manners of the other. 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all 
ages — Alcibiades — Falstaff" — Sir Kichard Steele — our late 
incomparable Brinsley — ^what a family likeness in all 
four ! 

"What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower ! 
what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence 
doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies ! 
What contempt for money, — accounting it (yours and 
mine especially) no better than dross ! What a liberal 
confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and 
Uium ! or rather, what a noble simplification of language 
(beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into 
one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective !^ — What near 
approaches doth he make to the primitive community, — 
to the extent of one half of the principle at least. 

He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to 
be taxed;" and the distance is as vast between him and 
one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and 
the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at 
Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, 
voluntary air ! So far removed from your sour parochial 
or state -gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry 
their want of welcome in their faces ! He cometh to 
you with a smUe, and troubleth you with no receipt ; 
confining himself to no set season. Every day is his 
Candlemas, or his feast of Holy Michael. He applieth 
the lene tormentiom of a pleasant look to yoiu* purse, — 
which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, 
as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun 
and wind contended ! He is the true Propontic which 
never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh handsomely at each 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 33 

man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he clelighteth to 
honour, struggles with destiny ; he is in the net. Lend 
therefore cheerfully, man ordained to lend — that thou 
lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion 
promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own 
person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! — but, when 
thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, 
as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice ! See 
how light lie makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with a 
noble enemy. 

Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind 
by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who 
parted this life on Wednesday evening ; dying, as he had 
lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a de- 
scendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who here- 
tofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions 
and sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pre- 
tended. Early in life he found himself invested with 
ample revenues ; which, with that noble disinterestedness 
which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, 
he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate 
and bring to nothing : for there is something revolting in 
the idea of a king holding a private pm'se ; and the 
thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus fiunished, by 
the very act of disfiunishment ; getting rid of the cum- 
bersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than prompt her to do ai^ght may merit praise, 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enter- 
prise, " borrowing and to borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout 
this island, it has iDeen calculated that he laid a tythe 
part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this 
estimate as greatly exaggerated : — but having had the 
honour of accompanying my friend, divers times, in his 
perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly 
struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we 
D 



34 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with 
tis. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phe- 
nomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries ; feeders 
of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was 
pleased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally 
been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way 
disconcert him. He rather took a pride in numbering 
them ; and, with Oomus, seemed pleased to be " stocked 
with so fair a herd." 

With such som'ces, it was a wonder how he contrived 
to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force 
of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that 
"money kept longer than three days stinks." So he 
made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank 
away (for he was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave 
away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling 
it violently from him — as boys do biirrs, or as if it had 
been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, 
inscrutable cavities of the earth ; — or he would bury it 
(where he would never seek it again) by a river's side 
under some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) 
paid no interest — but out away from him it must go 
peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilderness, 
while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams 
were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies 
became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to 
fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contri- 
bute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable 
way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick 
jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana 
fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, 
waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I 
would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may 
at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is 
not more repugnant to the kindliness of his natiure to 
refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to 
a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by 
his mumping visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 35 

better; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and 
expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the 
refusal. 

When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; 
his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; 
how great at the midnight hour ; and when I compare 
mth him the companions with whom I have associated 
since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think 
that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and little men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasiues are rather cased in 
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class 
of alienators more formidable than that which I have 
touched upon ; I mean your horroivers of books — those 
mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of 
shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comber- 
batch, matchless in his depredations ! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a 
great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in 
my little back study in Bloomsbury, Eeader !) — with the 
huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall 
giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) 
once held the tallest of my folios. Opera BonaventurcB, 
choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters 
(school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, 
and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, — itself an 
Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith 
of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for 
me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that " the title to 
property in a booT^ (my Bonaventure, for instance) is in 
exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and 
appreciating the same." Should he go on acting iipon 
this theory, which of oiu shelves is safe % 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 
from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the 
quick eye of a loser — was whilom the commodious resting- 
place of Browne on Urn Burial. 0. will hardly allege 
that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who 
introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the 



36 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have I known 
a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a 
rival more qualified to carry her off than himself — Just 
below, Dodsley's dramas want their foiu-th volume, where 
Vittoria Oorombona is ! The remainder nine are as dis- 
tasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed 
Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in 
sober state. — There loitered the ComiDlete Angler ; quiet 
as in life, by some stream side. In yonder nook, John 
Buncle, a widower- volume, with " eyes closed," mourns 
his ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, 
like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, 
sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. 
I have a small imder-coUection of this natm-e (my friend's 
gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has for- 
gotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little 
memory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice- 
deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the 
true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction ; natives, 
and naturalised. The latter seem as little disposed to 
inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I charge no 
warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put 
myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale 
of them to pay expenses. 

To lose a voliune to C. carries some sense and meaning 
in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal 
on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter 
after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., 
to be so importunate to carry off" with thee, in spite of 
tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of 
that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret New- 
castle — knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew 
also, thou most assuredly wouldst never tm-n over one 
leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but the mere sjiirit of 
contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of 
thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of all ! to transport it with 
thee to the Galilean land — 



NEW year's eve. 37 

Unworthy land to hartour such a sweetness, 

A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 

Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder ! 

hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and 



fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou 
keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales 1 
Child of the Green-room, it was imkindly done of thee. 
Thy wife, too, that part -French, better -part -English- 
woman ! — that she could fix upon no other treatise to 
bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the 
works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no French- 
man, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever 
by natiu:e constituted to comprehend a tittle ! Was there 
not Zimmerman on Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate 
collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- 
floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to 
such a one as S. T. 0. — he will retm-n them (generally 
anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched 
with annotations, tripling their value. I have had ex- 
perience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in 
matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, 
vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible 
in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; 
and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! 
wandering in Pagan lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy 
heart, nor thy library, against S. T. 0. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 

EvEEY man hath two birth-days : two days at least, in 
every year, which set him upon revolving the lajjse of 
time, as it affects his mortal dm-ation. The one is that 
which in an especial manner he ternieth his. In the 
gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of 



38 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, 
or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the 
matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and 
orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest 
too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one 
ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It 
is that from which all date their time, and count upon 
what is left. It is the nativity of om- common Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest 
bordering vipon heaven) — most solemn and touching is 
the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it 
without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of 
all the images that have been diffused over the past 
twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, performed or 
neglected, in that regretted time. I begin to know its 
worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal coloiu: ; 
nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he 
exclaimed — 

I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of 
us seems to be conscious of, in that awfid leave-takiag. 
I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night ; 
though some of my companions affected rather to manifest 
an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any 
very tender regTets for the decease of its predecessor. 
But I am none of those who — 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new 
books, new faces, new years, — from some mental twist 
which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I 
have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only in the 
prospects of other (former years). I plunge into fore- 
gone visions and conclusions. I encoimter pell-mell with 
past disappointments. I am armom-- proof against old 
discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old 
adversaries. I play over again for love, as the gamesters 



NEW year's eve. 39 

phrase it, games for which I once paid so dear. I would 
scarce now have any of those imtoward accidents and 
events of my life reversed. I would no more alter them 
than the incidents of some well- contrived novel. Me- 
thinks, it is better that I shoidd have pined away seven 
of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, 
and fairer eyes, of Alice W — n, than that so passionate a 
love adveutm-e should be lost. It was better that om- 
family should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell 
cheated us of, than that I shoidd have at this moment 
two thousand poimds in hanco, and be without the idea 
of that specious old rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to 
look back upon those early days. Do I advance a 
paradox when I say, that, skipping over the intervention 
of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself 
without the imputation of self-love 1 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro- 
spective — and mine is painfully so— can have a less re- 
spect for his present identity than I have for the man 
Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and humom-- 
some ; a notorious * * * ; addicted to % * * ; 
averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it ; — 
* * * besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you 
will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and 
much more, than thou canst be willing to lay at his door 
— but for the child Eha — that " other me," there, in the 
background — I must take leave to cherish the remem- 
brance of that young master — with as little reference, I 
protest, to his stupid changeling of five-and-forty, as if it 
had been a child of some other house, and not of my 
parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at five, 
and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered 
head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it 
in surprise at the gentle postm'e of maternal tenderness 
hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I 
know how it shrank from any the least colour of false- 
hood. — God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! — 



40 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

Thou art sophieticated. — I know how honest, how 
courageous (for a weakling) it was — how religious, how 
imaginative, how hopeful ! From what have I not fallen, 
if the child I remember was indeed myself, — and not 
some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, to 
give the rule to my impractised steps, and regulate the 
tone of my moral being ! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of 
sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom 
of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another 
cause : simply, that being without wife or family, I have 
not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and 
having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back 
upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir 
and favomite ? If these speculations seem fantastical to 
thee, Eeader (a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of 
the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly conceited 
only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the phantom 
cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a 
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of 
any old institution ; and the ringing out of the Old Year 
was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. 
— In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, 
though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never 
failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. 
Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought 
of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood 
alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically 
that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need 
were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; 
but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in 
a hot Jmie we can appropriate to our imagination the 
freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a 
truth ? — I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin 
to count the probabilities of my dm'ation, and to grudge 
at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like 
misers' farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen 



NEW year's eve. 41 

and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and 
would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the 
great wheel. I am not content to pass away " like a 
weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor 
sweeten the uniialatable draught of mortality. I care 
not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears 
human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course 
of destiny. I am in love with this green earth ; the face 
of town and country ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and 
the sweet security of streets. I would set up my 
tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age 
to which I am arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no 
younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be 
weaned by age ; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, 
into the grave. — Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in 
diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My 
household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not 
rooted up without blood They do not willingly seek 
Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and 
summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the 
delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the 
cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, 
and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself — do 
these things go out with life ? 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you 
are pleasant with him ? 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ; must I 
part with the intense dehght of having you (huge arm- 
fuls) ia my embraces '? Must knowledge come to me, if 
it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, 
and no longer by this familiar process of reading ? 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling 
indications which point me to them here, — the recog- 
nisable face — the " sweet assurance of a look " ? 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to 
give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and 
beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a swelter- 



42 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ing sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do 
such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then 
we expand and burgeon. Then we are as strong again, 
as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. 
The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts 
of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait 
upon that master feeling ; cold, munbness, dreams, per- 
plexity ; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral 
appearances, — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' 
sickly sister, like that innutritions one denounced in the 
Canticles : — I am none of her minions — I hold with the 
Persian. 

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings 
death unto my mind. All partial evils, like humom's, 
run into that capital plague-sore. — I have heard some 
profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their 
existence as a port of refuge ; and speak of the grave 
as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on 

a pillow. Some have wooed death' but out upon 

thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, 
execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to six score 
thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or 
tolerated, but shunned as an universal viper; to be 
branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way 
can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy 
Privation, or more frightful and confounding Positive ! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, 
are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For 
what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall " lie down 
with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime 
never greatly coveted the society of such bed-fellows 1 — 
or, forsooth, that " so shall the fairest face appear " 1 — 
why, to comfort me, must Alice "W — n be a goblin ? 
More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and 
misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon yom* ordinary 
tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself 
to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that " Such as 
he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, 



NEW year's eve. 43 

perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantmie I am 
alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. 
Know thy betters ! Thy New Years' days are past. I 
survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of 
wine — and while that tm-ncoat bell, that just now moiu-n- 
fuUy chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with 
changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune 
to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, 
cheerful Mr. Cotton. 

THE NEW YEAR. 

Hark, the cock crows, and yon briglit star 

Tells us, the day himself s not far ; 

And see where, breaking from the night, 

He gilds the western hills with light. 

With him old Janus doth appear, 

Peeping into the future year, 

With such a look as seems to say 

The prospect is not good that way. 

Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; 

When the prophetic fear of things 

A more tormenting mischief brings. 

More full of soul-tormenting gall 

Than direst mischiefs can befall. 

But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight, 

Better informed by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow 

That all contracted seemed biit now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste. 

And frown upon the ills are past ; 

But that which this way looks is clear, 

And smiles upon the New-born Year. 

He looks too from a place so high. 

The year lies open to his eye ; 

And all the moments open are 

To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year, 

So smiles upon us the first morn, 

And speaks us good so soon as born ? 

Plague on't ! the last was ill enough, 



44 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

This cannot but make better proof ; 
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 
The last, why so we may this too ; 
And then the next in reason shou'd 
Be superexcellently good : 
For the worst ills (we daily see) 
Have no more perpetuity 
Than the best fortunes that do fall ; 
Which also bring us wherewithal 
Longer their being to support, 
Than those do of the other sort : 
And who has one good year in three. 
And yet repines at destiny. 
Appears ungrateful in the case. 
And merits not the good he has. 
Then let us welcome the New Guest 
With lusty brimmers of the best : 
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 
And renders e'en Disaster sweet : 
And though the Princess turn her back. 
Let us but line ourselves with sack. 
We better shall by far hold out, 
Till the next year she face about. 

How say you, Reader — do not these verses smack of 
the rough magnanimity of the old English vein 1 Do 
they not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and 
productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the 
concoction ? Where be those puling fears of death, just 
now expressed or affected? — Passed like a cloud — ab- 
sorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean 
washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only 
Spa for these hypochondries. And now another cup of 
the generous ! and a merry New Year, and many of 
them to you all, my masters ! 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

"A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth,^ and the rigour of the 

game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle 

[^ This was before the introduction of rugs, Reader. Yori must 



MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST. 45 

(now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good 
game of whist. She was none of yoiir hxkewarm game- 
sters, your half-and-half players, who have no objection 
to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber ; 
who affirm that they have no j)leasure in winning ; that 
they like to win one game and lose another ; that they 
can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, 
but axe indifferent whether they play or no ; and will 
desire an adversary, who has slipped a wrong card, to 
take it up and play another.-^ These insufferable triflers 
are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a 
whole pot. Of such it may be said that they do not play 
at cards, but only play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested 
them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, 
save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at 
the same table with them. She loved a thorough-paced 
partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave, no 
concessions. She hated favours. She never made a 
revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without 
exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight : 
cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) 
"like a dancer." She sate bolt upright; and neither 
showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All 
people have their blind side — their superstitions ; and I 
have heard her declare, under the rose, that Hearts was 
her favourite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of 
the best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when 
it was her tiu-n to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle 
of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. 
She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous con- 
versation during its process. As she emphatically ob- 
served, cards were cards; and if I ever saw immingled 

remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinders betwixt your 
foot and the marble.] 

P As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one 
day and lose him the next.] 



46 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

distaste in her fine last-century countenance, it was at the 
airs of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had 
been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; and who, 
in his excess of candour, declared, that he thought there 
was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after 
serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could 
not bear to have her noble occupation, to which she 
wound up her faculties, considered in that light. It was 
her business, her duty, the thing she came iato the world 
to do, — and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards 
— over a book. 

Pope was her favourite author : his Eape of the Lock 
her favourite work. She once did me the favour to play 
over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of 
Ombre in that poem ; and to explain to me how far it 
agreed with, and in what points it would be found to 
differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite 
and poignant; and I had the pleasure of sending the 
substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they 
came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes 
upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; 
but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, 
she said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure 
young persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of 
partners — a thing which the constancy of whist abhors ; 
the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille 
— absurd, as she justly observed, in the pm-e aristocracy 
of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper 
power above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy 
vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone ; 
above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre 
Vole, — to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing 
parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — 
all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of capti- , 
vation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was 
the solider game : that was her word. It was a long 
meal; not like quadrdle, a feast of snatches. One or 



MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST. 47 

two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. 
They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate 
steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, capri- 
cious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the other. The 
skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded her of 
the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian 
states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetually changing 
postures and connexions; bitter foes to-day, sugared 
darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching in a breath ; 
— but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, 
steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great 
French and English nations. 

A grave simi^licity was what she chiefly admired in 
her favourite game.^ There was nothing silly in it, like 
the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. 'Eoflicshes — 
that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being 
can set up : — that any one should claim foiu: by virtue of 
holding cards of the same mark and colour, without refer- 
ence to the playing of the game, or the individual worth 
or pretensions of the cards themselves ! She held this 
to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards as 
alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, 
and looked deeper than the colom'S of things. — Suits 
were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity 
of array to distinguish them : but what should we say to 
a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing 
up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be 
marshalled — never to take the field ? — She even wished 
that whist were more simple than it is ; and, in my mind, 
would have stripped it of some appendages, which, in the 
state of hiunan frailty, may be venially, and even com- 
mendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the decid- 
ing of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one 
suit always trumps 1 — Why two colom'S, when the mark 
of the suit would have sufficiently distinguished them 
without it ? 

" But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed 
with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — 



48 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We 
see it in Roman Catholic comitries, where the music and 
the paintings draw in many to worship, whom yom' quaker 
spirit of unsensualising would have kept out. — You your- 
self have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess to 
me, whether, walking in yoiu- gallery at Sandham, among 
those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the 
ante-room, you ever felt yom' bosom glow with an elegant 
delight, at all comparable to that you have it in yom- 
power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged 
assortment of the court-cards 1 — the pretty antic habits, 
like heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assiuing 
scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary 
majesty of spades' — Pam in all his glory ! — 

"All these might be dispensed with ; and with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might 
go on very well, pictureless ; but the heauty of cards 
would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is 
imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere 
gambling. Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, to 
spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next 
to nature's), fittest arena for those com-tly combatants to 
play their gallant jousts and tm-neys in ! — Exchange those 
delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese artist, 
unconscious of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting 
their true application as the arrantest Ephesian joiurney- 
man that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) 
—exchange them for little bits of leather (oiu* ancestors' 
money), or chalk and a slate !" — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of 
my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on her 
favourite topic that evening I have always fancied myself 
indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made 
of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle 
(old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) 
brought with him from Florence : — this, and a trifle of 
five hundred pounds, came to me at her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I 



MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST. 49 

have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to con- 
fess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It 
was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — 
disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She 
could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce " Go" 
or " Thais a goP She called it an ungrammatical game. 
The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a 
rubber -(a five-dollar stake) because she would not take 
advantage of the turn-up knave, which would have given 
it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgrace- 
ful tenure of declaring ^Hivo for his heels." There is 
something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. 
Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the 
terms — such as pique — repique — the capot — theysavom-ed 
(she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even 
three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quad- 
rate, or square. She would argue thus : — Cards are war- 
fare : the ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war, 
in disguise of a sport : when single adversaries encounter, 
the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is 
too close a fight ; with spectators, it is not much bettered. 
No looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then 
it is a mere affair of money ; he cares not for your luck 
sympathetically, or for your play. — Three are still worse ; 
a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in 
cribbage, without league or alliance; or a rotation of 
petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heartless 
leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of them, as 
in tradrille. — But in square games {she meant tvhist), all 
that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accom- 
plished. There are the incentives of profit with honour, 
common to every species — though the latter can be but 
very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 
spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in 
whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre 
to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather 
E 



50 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

worse than nothing, and an impertinence. "Whist abhors 
neutrality, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in 
some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a 
cold — or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, but 
because your partner sympathises in the contingency. 
You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are ex- 
alted. Two again are mortified; which divides their 
disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the 
invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are better 
reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The 
hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. 
War becomes a civil game. By such reasonings as these 
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite 
pastime. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at 
any game, where chance entered into the composition, for 
nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, 
admire the subtlety of her conclusion ; — chance is nothing, 
but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious 
that cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation 
could it give to a man to tm-n up size ace a hundred times 
together by himself? or before spectators, where no stake 
was depending % — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand 
tickets with but one fortunate number — and what possible 
principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could 
it gratify to gain that number as many times successively 
without a prize % Therefore she disliked the mixtm-e of 
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. 
She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were 
taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games 
of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a 
stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played 
for glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit, — his 
memory, or combination-faculty rather — against another's ; 
like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- 
less. She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely 
infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. 
Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst 



MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST. 51 

whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with 
insufferable horror and ennni. Those well-cut similitudes 
of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she 
would argue (and I think in this case justly), were en- 
tirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard-head contests 
can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form 
and coloiu-. A pencil and diy slate (she used to say) were 
the proper arena for such combatants. 

To those pmiy objectors against cards, as nurtiu-ing the 
bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming 
animal. He must be always trying to get the better in 
something or other : — that this passion can scarcely be 
more safely expended than upon a game at cards : that 
cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; 
for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a 
few idle shillings are at stake, yet, diuing the illusion, we 
are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns 
and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much 
ado ; great battling, and little bloodshed ; mighty means 
for disproportioned ends : quite as diverting, and a great 
deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious 
games of life, which men play without esteeming them to 
be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment in 
these matters, I think I have experienced some moments 
in my life when playing at cards for nothing has even 
been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the 
best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a game 
at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a 
tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you are subdued 
and humble, — you are glad to put up with an inferior 
spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as 
sick whist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate 
the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to whom 
I should apologise. 



52 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

At such times, those terms which my old friend objected 
to, come in as something admissible — I love to get a 
tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am 
subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning 
amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted 
her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am f) — I wished it 
might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, 
and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play : I 
would be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. 
The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare 
the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed 
to apply after the game was over : and, as I do not much 
relish appliances, there it should ever bubble Bridget 
and I should be ever playing. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

I HAVE no ear. — 

Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am by 
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hang- 
ing ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome 
volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had 
never borne me. — I am, I think, rather delicately than 
copiously provided with those conduits ; and I feel no 
disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole 
for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets — • 
those indispensable side-intelhgencers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, with 
Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him 
to draw u^Don assurance — to feel " quite unabashed,"^ and 
at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, 
in the pillory ; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the 
compass of my destiny, that I ever should be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will 

^ ["Earless on higli stood, unabashed, Defoe," — Dunciad.'\ 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 53 

understand me to mean — for music. To say that this 
heart never melted at the concord of sweet somids, would 
be a foul self-libel. " Water parted from the sea" never 
fails to move it strangely. So does "In infancy." But 
they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old- 
fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentle- 
woman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appel- 
lation — the sweetest — why should I hesitate to name* 

Mrs. S -, once the blooming Fanny "Weatheral of the 

Temple — who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small 
imp as he was, even in his long coats ; and to make him 
glow, tremble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly 
indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment 
which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and subdue 
his natm-e quite for Alice W n. 

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to har- 
mony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. L,I 
have been practising " God save the King " all my life ; 
whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary 
corners; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within 
many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never 
been impeached, i 

I am not wit'h'but suspicion, that I have an undeveloped 
faculty of music within me. For thrumming, in my wild 
way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he 
was engaged in an adjoining parlom-, — on his retiun he 
was pleased to say, "Ae thought it cotddnot he the maid!" 
On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in some- 
what an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his 
suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, snatched 
from a superior refinement, soon convinced him that some 
being — technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed 
from a principle common to all the fine arts — had swayed 
the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less culti- 
vated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. 
I mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and 
not with any view of disparaging Jenny. 

Scientifically I could never be made to imderstand (yet 



54 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how 
one note should differ from another. Much less in voices 
can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes 
the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at, from it's being 
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, how- 
ever, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that 
which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce 
know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by 
misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like 
relation of obscurity to me ; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as 
conjuring as Baralipton. 

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — (consti- 
tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious 
combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, 
since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,) to remain, as it 
were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an 
art, which is said to have such an especial stroke at 
soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet, 
rather than break the candid current of my confessions, I 
must avow to you that I have received a great deal more 
pain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpen- 
ter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into 
more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, 
unset sounds, are nothing to the measured malice of music. 
The ear is passive to those single strokes; willingly endur- 
ing stripes while it hath no task to con. To music it can- 
not be passive. It will strive — mine at least will — 
spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an un- 
skilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have 
sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and 
inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest 
places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with 
sounds, which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of 
the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren atten- 
tion ! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of 
honest common-life sounds; — and the purgatory of the 
Enraged Musician becomes my paradise. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 55 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the pur- 
poses of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the 
auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing 
Audience !) immoveable, or affecting some faint emotion — 
till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next 
world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) 
I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, 
where "some of the forms of the earthly one should be 
kept up, with none of the enjoyment ; or like that 

• Party in a parlour 

All silent, and all damned. 

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of 
music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my 
apprehension. — Words are something ; but to be exposed 
to an endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a dying; 
to lie stretched ujDon a rack of roses ; to keep up languor 
by unintermitted effort ; to pile honey upon sugar, and 
sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness ; 
to fill up sound Avith feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace 
with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make 
the pictures for yoiu"self ; to read a book, all sto2:)s, and be ' 
obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent extempore 
tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable 
rambling mime — these are faint shadows of what I have 
undergone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of 
this empty instrumental music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have 
experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable : — 
afterwards foUoweth the languor and the oppression. — 
Like that "disappointing book in Patmos ; or, like the 
comings on of melancholy, described by Burton, doth music 
make her first insinuating approaches : — " Most pleasant 
it is to such as are melancholy given, to walk alone in 
some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by some 
brook side, and to meditate upon some delightsome and 
pleasant subject, which shall affect him most, amahilis 
insania, and mentis gratissimus error. A most incom- 



56 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

parable delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling 
to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which 
they suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or that they 
see done. — So delightsome these toys at first, they coidd 
spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole 
years in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, 
which are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn 
from them — winding and unwinding themselves as so 
many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until at the 
last the SCENE tuens upon a sudden, and they being 
now habitated to such meditations and solitary places, can 
endm-e no company, can think of nothing but harsh and 
distasteftd subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus 
inidoT, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise 
them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else : 
continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but 
this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and 
terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to 
their minds ; which now, by no means, no labom-, no 
persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid of, they 
cannot resist." 

Something like this " scene turning " I have expe- 
rienced at the evening parties, at the. house of my good 

Catholic friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital 

organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his 
drawing-room into a chapel, his week days into Simdays, 
and these latter into minor heavens.^ 

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn 
anthems, which peradventru-e struck upon my heedless ear, 
rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five- 
and-thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a 
soul of old religion into my young apprehension — (whether 
it be that, in which the Psalmist, weary of the persecu- 
tions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings — or that 
other which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, 
inquireth by what means the young man shall best cleanse 

^ I have been there, and still would go — 
'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 57 

his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth me. — I am for the 
time 

rapit above earth, 

And possess joys not promised at my birth. 

But when this master of the spell, not content to have 
laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more 
bliss than lies in her capacity to receive — impatient to 
overcome her " earthly " with his " heavenly," — still pour- 
ing in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from 
the sea of sound, or from that inexhai;sted German ocean, 
above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride 
those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant 
Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to 
attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in the 
deeps, — I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling 
to and fro at my wits' end ; — clouds, as of frankincense, 
oppress me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me — 
the genius of his religion hath me in her toils — a shadowy 
triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, 
so ingenuous — he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as in 
the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, — tri-coronated 
like himself ! — I am converted, and yet a Protestant ; — 
at once malleus hereticonim, and myself grand heresiarch : 
or three heresies centre in my person :— I am Marcion, 
Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog and Magog — what nof? — 
till the coming in of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the 
figment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in which 
chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at once recon- 
ciles' me to the rationalities of a purer faith ; and restores 
to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasant- 
countenanced host and hostess. 



58 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 



The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, 
and a merry j&rst of April to us all ! 

Many happy returns of this clay to you — and you — 
and you, Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face 
upon the matter. Do not we know one another ? what 
need of ceremony among friends 1 we have all a touch of 
that same — you understand me — a speck of the motley. 
Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the general 
festival, should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those 
sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not who 
knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, shall 
meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultits swn. 
Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself 
for your pains. What ! man, we have four quarters of 
the globe on our side, at the least computation. 

Fill us a cup of that spai'kling gooseberry — we will 
drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day — and 
let us troll the catch of Amiens — d^l,c ad me — d^ic ad me 
— how goes it 1 

Here shall he see 
Gross fools as he. 

Now would I give a trifle to know, historically and 
authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. 
I would certainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the 
present breed, I think I could without much difiiculty 
name you the jDarty. 

Remove yoiu: cap a little further, if you please : it 
hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, 
and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will 
give you, for my part, 

-The crazy old church clock, 



And the bewildered chimes. 



ALL fools' day. 59 

Good master Empedocles,'- you are "welcome. It is 
long since you went a salamander-gathering down J^tna. 
Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mercy 
yoiu" worship did not singe your mustachios. 

Ha ! Cleombrotus ! ^ and what salads in faith did you 
light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean^ You 
were founder, I take it, of the disiaterested sect of the 
Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plasterers at 
Babel, ^ bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! You 
have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of 
the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember 
Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or 
thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what 
a long bell you must have pulled, to call yom- top work- 
men to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Shinar. 
Or did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket 1 
I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you ovoc Monu- 
ment on Fish-street Hill, after yoiu: altitudes. Yet we 
think it somewhat. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears 'J — cry, 
baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, 
round as an orange, pretty moppet ! 

Mister Adams 'odso, I honoiu: yom- coat — pray 

do us the favour to read to us that sermon, which you 
lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and second in your 
portmanteau there — on Female Incontinence — the same 
— it will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently 
seasonable to the time of the day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray 
correct that error. 

Duns, spare yom- definitions. I must fine you a 
bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or 

[1 He who, to be deem'd 

A god, leap'd fondly into Etna flames — ] 

[^ — — - — He who, to enjoy 

Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea — ] 

P The builders next of Babel on the plain 
Of Senaar — ] 



60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

done syllogistically this day. Eemove those logical 
forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins 
of his apprehension stumbling across them. 

Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, is it you 1 
— Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to 
you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to 
command. — Master Silence, I will use few words with 
you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in 
somewhere. — You six will engross all the poor wit of the 
company to-day. — I know it, I know it. 

Ha ! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, 

time out of mind, art thou here again 1 Bless thy doublet, 
it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories :— what dost 
thou flitting about the world at this rate 1 — Thy customers 
are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long 
ago. — Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradven- 
ture, thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good Granville 
S , thy last patron, is flown. 

King Pandion, he is dead, 

All thy friends are lapt in lead. — 

Nevertheless, noble E , come in, and take your 

seat here, between Armado and Quisada; for in true 
com'tesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in 
com'teous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of 
well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of wise 
sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished 
Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, 
when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which 
declares that he might be hajopy ivith either, situated 
between those two ancient spinsters — when I forget the 
inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning 
now to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvo- 
lian smile — as if Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for 
his hero ; and as if thousands of periods must revolve, 
before the mirror of com'tesy could have given his invidi- 
ous preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied and 
meritorious-equal damsels. * * * * 



ALL fools' day. 61 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract 
onr Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I 
fear the second of April is not many hours distant — in 
sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love 
a Fool — as naturally as if I were of kith and kin to him. 
When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived 
not below the siuface of the matter, I read those Parables 
— not -guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more 
yearnings towards that simple architect, that built his 
house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more 
cautious neighbour : I grudged at the hard censure pro- 
noimced upon the qiuet soul that kept his talent ; and — 
prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, 
to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine wariness of 
their competitors — I felt a kindliness, that almost 
amounted to a tendre, for those five thoughtless virgins. 
— I have never made an acquaintance since, that lasted : 
or a friendship, that answered ; with any that had not 
some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I ven- 
erate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more 
laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, 
the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or 
overreach you. I love the safety which a palpable hallu- 
cination warrants ; the security, which a word out of sea- 
son ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say 
a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a 
dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse 
matter in his composition. It is observed, that "the 
foolisher the fowl or fish, — woodcocks, — dotterels — cods'- 
heads, etc., the finer the flesh thereof," and what are 
commonly the world's received fools but such whereof the 
world is not worthy? and what have been some of the 
kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of 
absm'dity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys 1 — 
Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construc- 
tion, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. 



62 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 

Still-born Silence ! thou that art 

Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the month, and thaw o' the mind ! 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 

Who makes religion mystery ! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 

Leave, thy desert shades among, 

Reverend hermit's hallow'd cells, 

"Where retired devotion dwells ! 

With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! ^ 

Readee, ■would'st thou know what true peace and quiet 
mean ; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and 
clamom-s of the multitude ; would'st thou enjoy at once 
solitude and society ; would'st thou possess the depth of 
thine own spkit in stillness, without being shut out from 
the consolatory faces of thy species ; would'st thou be 
alone and yet accompanied ; solitary, yet not desolate ; 
singular, yet not without some to keep thee in counte- 
nance ; a unit in aggregate ; a simple in composite : — 
come with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep as that " before the winds 
were made"? go not out into the wilderness, descend not 
into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy case- 
ments ; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with 
little-faith' d self-mistrusting Ulysses. — Retire with me 
into a Quakers' Meeting. 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to 
hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude it 
is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert compared with this 
place 1 what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes 1 — 
here the goddess reigns and revels. — " Boreas, and Cesias, 
and Argestes loud," do not with their interconfounding 

^ From "Poems of all sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 1653. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 63 

uproars more augment the brawl — nor the waves of the 
blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — than their ojDpo- 
site (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered 
more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too 
hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself 
hath a positive more and less ; and closed eyes would 
seem to obscure the great obsciuity of midnight. 

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot 
heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth 
by himself The perfect is that which he can sometimes 
attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a 
Quakers' Meeting. — Those first hermits did certainly 
understand this principle, when they retired into Egyptian 
sohtudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's 
want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his 
brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. 
In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a 
book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting 
by — say, a wife — he, or she, too, (if that be probable,) 
reading another without interruption, or oral communica- 
tion 1 — can there be no sympathy without the gabble of 
words ? — away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and- 
cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master Zimmer- 
man, a sympathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles of some 
cathedral, time-stricken ; 

Or iTiider haiighig monntaius, 
Or by the fall of fountains ; 

is but a vulgar luxury compared with that which those 
enjoy who come together for the purposes of more com- 
plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be 
felt." — The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing 
so solemn, so spirit soothing, as the naked walls and 
benches of a Quakers' Meeting. Here are no tombs, no 
inscriptions. 

-Sands, ignoble things, 



Dropt from the ruined sides of kings — 



64 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

but here is something which throws Antiquity herself into 
the fore-ground — Silence — eldest of things — language of 
old Night — primitive discourser — to which the insolent 
decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a 
violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression. 

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
Looking tranquillity ! 

Nothing - plotting, nought - caballing, unmischievous 
synod ! convocation without intrigue ! parliament without 
debate ! what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to 
consistory ! — if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it 
will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom 
of your custom, when, sitting among you in deepest peace, 
which some out-welling tears would rather confirm than 
disturb, I have reverted to the times of your beginnings, 
and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesbm-y. — I 
have witnessed that which brought before my eyes your 
heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious 
violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, 
sent to molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fii-es of two 
persecutions, the outcast and off-scouring of church and 
presbytery. — I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had 
wandered into your receptacle with the avowed intention 
of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place 
receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit among 
ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remember Penn before 
his accusers, and Fox in the bail dock, where he was 
lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and " the Judge and the 
Jiury became as dead men under his feet." 

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would 
recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to read 
Sewel's History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is 
the abstract of the jom-nals of Fox and the primitive 
Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than 
anything you will read" of Wesley and his colleagues. 
Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you 
mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 65 

worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read the 
true story of that much-injiu-ed, ridiculed man (who per- 
haps hath been a byword in your mouth) — James Naylor : 
what dreadful sufferings, with what patience, he endiued, 
even to the boring through of his tongue with red-hot 
irons, without a murmur; and with what strength of mind, 
when the delusion he had fallen into, which they stig- 
matised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer thoughts, 
he could renounce his error, in a strain of the beautifullest 
humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker 
still ! — so different from the practice of yoiu- common 
converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, 
apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough 
from the society of their former errors, even to the re- 
nimciation of some saving truths, with which they had 
been mingled, not implicated. 

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart ; and 
love the early Quakers. , 

How far the followers of these good men in our days 
have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion 
they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of 
Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in their 
assemblies upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. 
Others, again, I have watched, when my thoughts .should 
have been better engaged, in which I could possibly 
detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in 
all, and the disposition to imanimity, and the absence of 
the fierce controversial workings. — If the spiritual pre- 
tensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make 
few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in 
their preaching. It is seldom, indeed, that you shall 
see one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only now 
and then a trembling, female, generally ancient, voice is 
heard — ^you cannot guess from what part of the meeting it 
proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out 
a few words which "she thought might suit the condition of 
some present," with a quaking diffidence, Avhich leaves no 
possibility of supposing that anything of female vanity 
F 



66 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A, 

was mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness, 
and a restraining modesty. — The men, for what I have 
observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a 
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of 
giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have 
danced "from head to foot equipt in iron mail." His 
frame was of iron too. But he was malleable. I saw 
him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not say of 
delusion. The strivings of the outer man were unutter- 
able — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. I 
saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail — 
his joints all seemed loosening — it was a figm-e to set off 
against Paul preaching — the words he uttered were few, 
and sound — he was evidently resisting his will — keeping 
down his own word-wisdom with more mighty effort than 
the world's orators strain for theirs. " He had been a 
WIT in his youth," he told us, with expressions of a 
sober remorse. And it was not till long after the im- 
pression had begun to wear away that I was enabled, 
with something like a smile, to recall the striking incon- 
gruity of the confession — understanding the term in its 
worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy 
of the person before me. His brow would have scared 
away the Levities — the Jocos Eisus-que — faster than the 
Loves fled the face of Dis at Enna. — By ivit^ even in his 
youth, I will be sworn he understood something far 
within the limits of an allowable liberty. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a 
word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. 
You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You 
have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius ; or as in 
some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild 
creatures, the Tongue, that unruly member, has strangely 
lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with still- 
ness. — 0, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to 
sickness of the j anglings and nonsense-noises of the world, 
what a balm and a solace it is to go and seat yourself 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 67 

for a quiet half-laour upon some undisputed, corner of a 
bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 

Their garb and stiUness conjoined, present a uniformity, 
tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture — " forty feeding 
like one." — 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of re- 
ceiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be something 
more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress 
is a lily ; and when they come up in bands to their 
Whitsun conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the 
metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they 
show like troops of the Shining Ones. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

My reading has been lamentably desultory and imme- 
thodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and 
treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, 
and ways of feeling. In everything that relates to 
science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the 
world. I should have scarcely cut a figiu-e among the 
franklins, or covmtry gentlemen, in King John's days. I 
know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' 
standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic 
as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa 
merges into Asia ; whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of 
those great divisions; nor can form the remotest conjectm-e 
of the position of New ■ South Wales, or Van Diemen's 
Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear 
friend in the firstruamed of these two Terrae Incognitse. 
I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for 
the Bear, or Charles's Wain ; the place of any star ; or 
the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus 
only by her brightness — and if the sun on some portent- 
ous morn were to make his first appearance in the West, 
I verily believe, that, while all the world were gasping 



68 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, 
from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of 
history and chronology I possess some vague points, such 
as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscel- 
laneous study J but I never deliberately sat down to a 
chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim 
apprehensions of the foiu- great monarchies ; and some 
times the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first 
in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning 
Egypt, and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with 
great painstaking, got me to think I understood the first 
proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the 
second. I am entirely unacquainted with the modern 
languages ; and, like a better man than myself, have 
" small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to the 
shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers 
— not from the circumstance of my being town-born — for 
I should have brought the same inobservant spirit into 
the world with me, had I first seen it "on Devon's 
leafy shores," — and am no less at a loss among purely 
town objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes. — Not 
that I affect ignorance — but my head has not many 
mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill 
it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without 
aching. I sometimes wonder how I have passed my 
probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have 
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man 
may do very well with a very little knowledge, and 
scarce be found out, in mixed company ; everybody is so 
much more ready to produce his own, than to caU for a 
display of yoiu- acquisitions. But in a Ute-a-Ute there is 
no shuffling. The truth will out. There is nothing 
which I dread so much, as the being left alone for a 
quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man, 
that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of 
this sort. — 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and 
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 69 

gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving 
his parting du'ections (while the steps were adjusting), in 
a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to 
be neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but some- 
thing partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, 
and we drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he 
naturally enough addressed his conversation to me ; and 
we discussed the merits of the fare ; the civility and 
punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance of an opposi- 
tion coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities 
of its success — to all which I was enabled to retm-n pretty 
satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of 
etiquette by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro 
in the stage aforesaid — when he suddenly alarmed me by 
a startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize 
cattle that morning in Smithfield ? Now, as I had not 
seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibi- 
tions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He 
seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my 
declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from 
the sight, and doubtless had hoped to compare notes on 
the subject. However, he assm^ed me that I had lost a 
fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We 
were now approaching Norton Folgate, when the sight of 
some shop-goods ticketed freshened him up into a disser- 
tation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I was 
now a little in heart, as the nature of my morning avoca- 
tions had brought me into some sort of familiarity with 
the raw material ; and I was surprised to find how 
eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India 
market ; when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity 
to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever 
made any calculation as to the value of the rental of all 
the retail shops in London. Had he asked of me what 
song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed 
when he hid himself among women, I might, with Sir 
Thomas Browne, have hazarded a " wide solution." ^ 

^ Urn Buiial. 



70 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

My companion saw my embarrassment, and, the alms- 
houses beyond Shoreditch just coming in view, with 
great good-nature and dexterity shifted his conversation 
to the subject of pubhc charities ; which led to the com- 
parative merits of provision for the poor in past and 
present times, with observations on the old monastic 
institutions, and charitable orders ; but, finding me rather 
dimly impressed with some glimmering notions from old 
poetic associations, than strongly fortified with any specu- 
lations reducible to calculation on the subject, he gave 
the matter up ; and, the country beginning to open more 
and more upon vis, as we approached the turnpike at 
Kingsland (the destined termination of his journey), he 
put a home thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate 
position he could have chosen, by advancing some queries 
relative to the North Pole Expedition. While I was 
muttering out something about the Panorama of those 
strange regions (which I had actually seen), by way of 
parrying the question, the coach stopping relieved me 
from any fiu-ther apprehensions. My companion getting 
out, left me in the comfortable possession of my ignor- 
ance ; and I heard him, as he went off, putting questions 
to an outside passenger, who had alighted with him, 
regarding an epidemic disorder that had been rife about 
Dalston, and which my friend assured him had gone 
through five or six schools in that neighbomiiood. The 
truth now flashed upon me, that my companion was a 
schoolmaster ; and that the youth, whom he had parted 
from at om- first acquaintance, must have been one of the 
bigger boys, or the usher. — He was evidently a kind- 
hearted man, who did not seem so much desu-ous of pro- 
voking discussion by the questions which he put, as of 
obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear 
that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries, 
for their own sake ; but that he was in some way bound 
to seek for knowledge. A greenish-coloiu-ed coat, which 
he had on, forbade me to siu-mise that he was a clergy- 
man. The adventm-e gave birth to some reflections on 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 71 

the difference between i^ersons of his profession in past 
and present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues ; the 
breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Liuacres : 
who beheving that all learning was contained in the lan- 
guages which they taught, and desj^ising every other 
acquu-ement as superficial and useless, came to their task 
as to a sport ! Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed 
away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving 
in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, 
and prosodies ; renewing constantly the occupations which 
had charmed their studious childhood ; rehearsing con- 
tinually the part of the past ; life must have slij^ped from 
them at last like one day. They were always in their 
first garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among 
their Flori- and their Spici-legia ; in Arcadia still, but 
kings ; the ferule of theu' sway not much harsher, but 
of like dignity with that mild sceptre attributed to king 
Basileus ; the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and 
their Philoclea ; with the occasional duncery of some un- 
toward tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, 
or a clown Damoetas ! 

With what a savom- doth the Preface to Colet's, or 
(as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! 
" To exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that 
intendeth to attain the understanding of the tongues, 
wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and 
knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour ; for 
so much as it is known, that nothing can surely be ended, 
whose beginning is either feeble or faulty ; and no build- 
ing be perfect whereas the foundation and gToimdwork is 
ready to fall, and unable to uphold the biu-den of the 
frame." How well doth this stately preamble (compar- 
able to those which Milton commendeth as " having been 
the usage to prefix to some solemn law, then first pro- 
mulgated by Solon or Lycm'gus ") correspond with and 
illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a 
succeedina; clause, which would fence about srrammar- 



72 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

rules with the severity of faith-articles! — "as for the 
diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken away 
by the King's Majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the in- 
convenience, and favourably providing the remedie, caused 
one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be dili- 
gently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to 
be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in 
changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that which 
follows : " wherein it is profitable that he (the pupil) can 
orderly decline his noun and his verb." His noun ! 

The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least 
concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate 
grammar-rules. 

The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little 
of everything, because his pupil is required not to be 
entirely ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, 
if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something 
of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of whatever is curious or 
proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind ; an 
insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of 
statistics ; the quality of soils, etc., botany, the con- 
stitution of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get 
a notion of some part of his expected duties by consult- 
ing the famous Tractate on Education, addressed to Mr. 
Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is 
expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, 
which he may charge in the bill, but at school intervals, 
as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields 
(those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least 
part of what is expected from him is to be done in school- 
hoiu-s. He must insinuate knowledge at the mollia 
temjwra fandi. He must seize every occasion — the 
season of the year — the time of the day — a passing cloud 
— a rainbow — a waggon of hay — a regiment of soldiers 
going by — to inculcate something useful. He can receive 
no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must 
catch at it as an object of instruction. He must inter- 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 73 

pret beauty into the pictiu'esque. He cannot relish a 
beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable im- 
provement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the 
sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe — 
that Great Book, as it has been called — is to him, indeed, 
to all intents and pm-poses, a book out of which he is 
doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. 
— Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather 
worse off than before ; for commonly he has some in- 
trusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times ; some 
cadet of a great family ; some neglected lump of nobility, 
or gentry ; that he must drag after him to the play, to 
the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, 
or into the country, to a friend's house, or his favomite 
watering-place. Wherever he goes this uneasy shadow 
attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and 
in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their 
mates ; but they are unwholesome companions for grown 
people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side than 
on the other. — Even a child, that "plaything for an 
horn'," tires always. The noises of children, playing their 
own fancies— as I now hearken to them, by fits, sporting 
on the green before my window, while I am engaged in 
these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at 
Shacklewell — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly 
take from the labour of my task. It is like writing to 
music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought 
at least to do so — for in the voice of that tender age there 
is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of 
man's conversation. — I should but spoil their sport, and 
diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in 
their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with a person 
of very superior capacity to my own — not, if I know my- 
self at all, from any considerations of jealousy or self-com- 
parison, for the occasional communion with such minds 
has constituted the fortune and felicity of my life — but 



74 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above 
you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent 
doses of original tlainking from otliers restrain what lesser 
portion of tliat faculty you may possess of yoiu: own. 
You get entangled in another man's mind, even as you 
lose yourself in another man's groimds. You are walking 
with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassi- 
tude. The constant operation of such potent agency 
would reduce me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You 
may derive thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, 
the mould in which yom' thoughts are cast, must be your 
own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's 
intellectual frame. — 

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged 
upward, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be 
stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does 
not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases 
you by its provoking inaudibility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of 
a schoolmaster 1 — because we are conscious that he is not 
quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of 
place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gidliver 
from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature 
of his understanding to yoiu's. He cannot meet you on 
the square. He wants a point given him, like an in- 
different whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that 
he wants to be teaching ^ou. One of these professors, 
upon my comi^lauiing that these little sketches of mine 
were anything but methodical, and that I was unable to 
make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in 
the method by which young gentlemen in his seminary 
were taught to compose English themes. The jests of a 
schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do not ell out of 
school. He is under the restraint of a formal or didac- 
tive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is imder a 
moral one. He can no more let his intellect loose in 
society than the other can his inclinations. He is forlorn 
among his coevals ; his juniors cannot be his friends. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 75 

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this 
profession, wiitiug to a friend respecting a youth who had 
quitted his school abruptly, " that your nephew was not 
more attached to me. But persons in my situation are 
more to be pitied than can well be imagined. We are 
smTomided by yoimg, and, consequently, ardently affec- 
tionate hearts, but ive can never hojDe to share an atom 
of their affections. The relation of master and scholar 
forbids this. Soio pleasing this must be to you, how I 
envy your feelings ! my friends will sometimes say to me, 
when they see young men whom I have educated, return 
after some years' absence from school, their eyes shining 
with pleasm-e, while they shake hands with their old 
master, bringing a present of game to me, or a toy to my 
wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms for my care 
of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys ; 
the house is a scene of happiness ; I, only, am sad at 
heart.^ — This fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who 
fancies he repays his master with gratitude for the care 
of his boyish years — this yoimg man — in the eight long 
years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, never 
could repay me with one look of genuine feeling. He 
was proud, when I praised ; he was submissive, when I 
reproved him ; but he did never love me — and what he 
now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but 
the pleasant sensation which all persons feel at revisiting 
the scenes of their boyish hopes and fears ; and the seeing 
on equal terms the man they were accustomed to look up 
to with reverence. My wife, too," this interesting cor- 
respondent goes on to say, " my once darling Anna, is the 
wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — knowing 
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable 
creatm-e, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply 
the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who 
never sat still, was in every part of the house in a 
moment, and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten 
to fasten down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing 
herself to death — I expressed my fears that I was bring- 



76 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ing her into a way of life unsuitable to her ; and she, 
who loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert 
herself to perform the duties of her new situation. She 
promised, and she has kept her word. What wonders will 
not woman's love perform 1 — My house is managed with 
a propriety and decorum unknown in other schools ; my 
boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every proper 
accommodation; and all this performed with a careful 
economy, that never descends to meanness. But I have 
lost my gentle helpless Anna ! When we sit down to 
enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am 
compelled to listen to what have been her useful (and 
they are really useful) employments through the day, and 
what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her heart 
and her features are changed by the duties of her situation. 
To the boys, she never appears other than the master's 
wife, and she looks up to me as the hoys' master ; to 
whom all show of love and affection would be highly 
improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situation and 
mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. 
For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, 
and can I reproach her for it *?" — For the communication 
of this letter I am indebted to my cousin Bridget. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympa- 
thiseth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyn- 
crasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, 
nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or 
Dutch. — Religio Medici. 

That the author of the Religio Medici mounted upon the 
airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and 
conjectm-al essences ; in whose categories of Being the 
possible took the upper hand of the actual ; should have 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 77 

overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor 
concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It 
is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals 
he should have condescended to distinguish that species 
at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the 
scene of my activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national 
or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no 
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is 
to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it 
becomes indifferent it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in 
plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings 
and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, 
antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of 
me that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all 
indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The 
more piu:ely-English word that expresses sympathy, will 
better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy 
man, who upon another accoimt cannot be my mate or 
fellow. I cannot like all people alike. ^ 

1 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of 
imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be 
no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and constel- 
lated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere 
cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can 
believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one 
another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. 

-We by proof find there should be 



'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels, " and 
he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who 
attempted to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and being put 



78 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and 
am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. 
They cannot like me— and in truth, I never knew one of 
that nation who attempted to do it. There is something 
more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. 
We know one another at first sight. There is an order 
of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be content 
to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti- 
Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude 
to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in 
their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their 
intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole 
pieces in it. They are content with fragments and 
scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no fidl front to 
them — a feature or side-face at the most. Hints and 
glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the 
utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game 
peradventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more 
robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that 
lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and 
shifting : waxing, and again waning. Their conversation 
is accordingly. They will throw out a random word in 
or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it 
is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon 
their oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, 
with some abatement. They seldom wait to matm-e a 
proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. 
They delight to impart their defective discoveries as they 
arise, without waiting for their full development. They 
are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting 
it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. 
The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is 
constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is 

to the i\ack could give no other reason for the deed bn.t an mveterate 
antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the king. 

-The cause which to that act compell'd him 



Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 79 

born in panoply. You are never admitted to see his 
ideas in theii' growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are 
not rather jDut together upon principles of clock-work. 
You never catch his mind in an undress. He never 
hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas 
in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total 
wealth into company, and gravely impacks it. His 
riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch 
a glittering something in your presence to share it with 
you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or 
not. You cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. 
He does not find, but bring. You never witness his first 
apprehension of a thing. His imderstanding is always at 
its meridian- — you never see the first da^rni, the early 
streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Sur- 
mises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-conscious- 
nesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo con- 
ceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The 
twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox 
— he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none 
either. Between the afiirmative and the negative there 
is no border-land with him. You cannot hover with him 
iipon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a 
probable argument. He always keeps the path. You 
cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. 
His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. 
He cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. 
There can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation 
is as a book. His afiirmations have the sanctity of an 
oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He 
stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's 
country. " A healthy book ! " — said one of his country- 
men to me, who had ventiued to give that appellation to 
John Buncle, — " Did I catch rightly Avhat you Said ? I 
have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of 
body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly 
applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of in- 
direct expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an ex- 



80 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

tinguisher vipon yoiir irony, if you are unhappily blest 
with a vein of it. Eemember you are upon your oath. 
I have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da 
Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. * * * * After 
he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how 
he liked my beauty (a foolish name it goes by among 
my friends) — when he very gravely assured me, that " he 
had considerable respect for my character and talents " 
(so he was pleased to say), " but had not given himself 
much thought about the degree of my personal pre- 
tensions." The misconception staggered me, but did not 
seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of this nation are 
particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody 
doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annmiciate it. 
They do indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, 
like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth 
becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition that 
contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible 
to become a subject of disputation. I was present not 
long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of 
Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly ex- 
pression (in my South British way), that I wished it 
were the father instead of the son — when four of them 
started up at once to inform me, that " that was im- 
possible, because he was dead." An impracticable wish, 
it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift has 
hit off this part of their character, namely their love of 
truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality that 
necessarily confines the passage to the margin. ^ The 

^ There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit 
themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no 
consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents 
as happen every day ; aud this I have observed more frequently 
among the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not 
to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; which kind 
of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms 
and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, peculiar to tliat country, 
would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on Con- 
versation. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 81 

tecliousness of these people is certainly provoking. I 
wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In my early life I 
had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Biu-ns. I 
have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with 
his comitrymen by expressing it. But I have always 
foimd that a true Scot resents yoiu: admiration of his 
compatriot even more than he would your contempt of 
him. The latter he imputes to yoiu* " imperfect acquaint- 
ance with many of the words which he uses ; " and the 
same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose 
that you can admire him. — Thomson they seem to have 
forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor 
forgiven, for his delineation of Rory and his companion, 
upon their first introduction to oiu- metropolis. — Speak of 
Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon 
you Hume's History compared with his Continuation of 
it. What if the historian had continued Humphrey 
Clinker? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They 
are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which 
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the 
pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of 
familiar intercoiurse with any of that nation. I confess 
that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. 
Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the 
story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centiu-ies of injury, con- 
tempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, 
dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our and 
their fathers, must and ought to affect the blood of the 
children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly 
yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candour, liberality, 
the light of a nineteenth centiu:y, can close up the breaches 
of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial 
to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change — for the mer- 
cantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in 
the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the 
approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become 
so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, 
G 



82 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not 
like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con- 
geeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If 
they are converted, why do they not come over to us 
altogether? Why keep up a form of separation, when 
the life of it is fled ] If they can sit with us at table, 
why do they keck at our cookery % I do not understand 
these half convertites. Jews christianizing — Christians 
judaizing^puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate 
Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than a wet 
Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separa- 
tive. B ■ would have been more in keeping if he had 

abided by the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine 
scorn in his face, which nature meant to be of Chris- 
tians. — The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of 
his proselytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. 
How it breaks out, when he sings, " The Children of 
Israel passed through the Red Sea !" The auditors, for 
the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over 
our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. 

B has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, 

and it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of 
his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with understand- 
ing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the 
Commandments, and give an appropriate character to 
each prohibition. His nation, in general, have not over- 
sensible countenances. How should they? — but you 
seldom see a silly expression among them. — Gain, and 
the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never 
heard of an idiot being born among them. — Some admire 
the Jewish female-physiognomy. I admire it — but with 
trembhng. Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with 
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of 
tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather masks 
— that have looked out kindly upon one in casual en- 
counters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller 
beautifully calls — these "images of God cut iu ebony." 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 83 

But I should not like to associate with them, to share 
my meals and my good nights with them — because they 
are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate 
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of 
the day when I meet any of their people in my path. 
When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the 
sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a 
ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from 
the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desde- 
mona would say) " to live with them." I am all over 
sophisticated — with humours, fancies, craving homiy 
sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit- 
chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- 
whams, which their simpler taste can do without. I 
should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites 
are too high for the salads which (according to Evelyn) 
Eve dressed for the angel ; my gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to 
retiurn to a question put to them may be explained, I 
think, without the vulgar assumption, that they are more 
given to evasion and equivocating than other people. 
They naturally look to their words more carefully, and 
are more cautious of committing themselves. They have 
a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand 
in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law 
exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting 
to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all 
religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to intro- 
duce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds 
of truth — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of 
justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily 
intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by an 
oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of 
the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected and 
conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. 



84 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to 
hear a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if 
I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrect- 
ness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into 
ordinary conversation ; and a Mud of secondary or laic- 
truth is tolerated, where clergy-tnith — oath-truth, by the 
natiu-e of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker 
knows none of this distinction. His simple aflBrmation 
being received upon the most sacred occasions, without 
any further test, stamps a value upon the words which 
he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He 
looks to them, natm-ally, with more severity. You can 
have of him no more than his word. He knows, if he is 
caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for 
himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. 
He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how far 
a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted 
against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect 
answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, 
might be illustrated, and the practice justified by a more 
sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this 
occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is 
notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be 
traced to this imposed self- watchfulness — if it did not 
seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock 
of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in 
the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of perse- 
cution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials 
and racking examinations. " You will never be the wiser, 
if I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said 
one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been 
putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter 
as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The 
astonishing composm"e of this people is sometimes ludi- 
crously displayed in lighter instances.— I was travelling 
in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up 
in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. "We stopped 
to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 85 

partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined 
themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. 
When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my 
companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. 
This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and 
positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of 
the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady 
seemed" by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in 
with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled 
out their money and formally tendered it — so much for 
tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine^ — for the 
supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her 
demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, 
as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest 
and gravest going first, mth myself closing up the rear, 
who thought I could not do better than follow the ex- 
ample of such grave and warrantable personages. We 
got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The 
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambigu- 
ously pronoimced, became after a time inaudible — and 
now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for 
a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I 
waited, in the hope that some justification would be 
offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice 
of their conduct. To my great surprise not a syllable 
was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a 
meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by 
inquiring of his next neighbour, " Hast thee heard how 
indigos go at the India House V and the question operated 
as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 

We are too hasty when we set down oiu: ancestors in the 
gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they 
seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the 



86 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

relations of this visible world we find them to have been 
as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as 
ourselves. But when once the invisible world was sup- 
posed to be open, and the lawless agency of bad spirits 
assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fit- 
ness, or proportion- — of that which distinguishes the likely 
from the palpable absm'd — could they have to guide them 
in the rejection or admission of any particular testi- 
mony 1 — That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as 
their waxen images consumed before a fire — that corn 
was lodged, and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in 
diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest — or that spits and 
kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some 
rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring — were all 
equally probable where no law of agency was understood. 
That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the 
flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous 
siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld — has neither 
likelihood nor unlikelihood a priori to us, who have no 
measure to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate 
what rate those amle souls may fetch in the devil's market. 
Nor, when the wickecl are expressly symbolised by a goat, 
was it to be wondered at so much, that he should come 
sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor. — That 
the intercourse was opened at all between both worlds 
was perhaps the mistake — ^but that once assumed, I see 
no reason for disbelieving one attested story of this nature 
more than another on the score of absurdity. There is no 
law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream 
may be criticised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed 
in the days of received witchcraft ; that I could not have 
slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. 
Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the 
universal belief that these wretches were in league with 
the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their mut- 
tering, no simple justice of the peace seems to have 
scrupled issuing, or silly headborough serving, a warrant 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT EEARS. 87 

upon them — as if they should subpoena Satan ! — Prospero 
in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers 
himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies 
to an unknown island. He might have raised a storm or 
two, we think, on the passage. His acquiescence is in 
exact analogy to the non-resistance of switch es to the con- 
stituted powers. — What stops the Fiend in Spenser from 
tearing Guyon to pieces — or who had made it a condition 
of his prey that Guyon must take assay of the glorious 
bait — we have no guess. We do not know the laws of 
that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about 
witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary 
aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention 
the accident which directed my cmiosity originally into 
this channel. In my father's book-closet the history of 
the Bible by Stackhouse occupied a distinguished station. 
The pictures with which it abounds — one of the ark, in 
particular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated 
with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the 
artist had been upon the spot — attracted my childish 
attention. There was a pictiue, too, of the Witch raising 
up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We 
shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge 
tomes ; and there was a pleasure in removing folios of 
that magnitude, which, with infinite straining, was as 
much as I could manage, from the situation which they 
occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the 
work from that time to this, but I remember it consisted 
of Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with the 
objection appended to each story, and the sohttion of 
the objection regularly tacked to that. The objection 
was a summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed 
to the credibility of the history by the shrewdness 
of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an 
almost complimentary excess of candour. The solution 
was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and 
antidote were both before you. To doubts so put, and so 



88 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever. The 
dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to 
trample on. But — like as was rather feared than real- 
ized from that slain monster in Spenser — from the womb 
of those crushed errors young dragonets would creep, 
exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint G-eorge as 
myself to vanquish. The habit of expecting objections 
to every passage set me upon starting more objections, 
for the glory of finding a solution of my own for them. 
I became staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. 
The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard read 
in church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, 
and were tiurned into so many historic or chronologic 
theses to be defended against whatever impugners. I 
was not to disbelieve them, but — the next thing to that 
— I was to be quite sure that some one or other would 
or had disbelieved them. Next to making a child an 
infidel is the letting him know that there are infidels at 
all. Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's 
strength. 0, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the 
mouth of a babe and a suckling ! — I should have lost 
myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, 
with such unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but 
for a fortunate piece of ill-fortune which about this time 
befell me. Tm-ning over the picture of the ark with too 
much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious 
fabric — driving my inconsiderate fingers right through 
the two larger quadrupeds, the elephant and the camel, 
that stare (as well they might) out of the two last 
windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval 
architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked up, and 
became an interdicted treasure. With the book, the 
objections and solutions gradually cleared out of my head, 
and have seldom retm-ned since in any force to trouble 
me. But there was one impression which I had imbibed 
from Stackhouse which no lock or bar could shut out, 
and which was destined to try my childish nerves rather 
more seriously. — That detestable picture ! 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 89 

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. Tlie niglit- 
time, solitude, aud the dark, were my hell. The sufier- 
ings I endured in this nature would justify the expression. 
I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the 
fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life — so far 
as memory serves in things so long ago — without an 
assiu'ance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing 
some frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted 
in part, if I say, that to this pictiu-e of the Witch raising 
up Samuel — (0 that old man covered with a mantle !) — 
I owe — not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy 
— but the shape and manner of their visitation. It was 
he who dressed up for me a hag that nightly sate upon 
my pillow — a sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid 
was far from me. All day long, while the book was 
permitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, 
and at night (if I may use so bold an expression) awoke 
into sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, even 
in the day-light, once enter the chamber where I slept, 
without my face turned to the window, aversely from the 
bed where my 'v^dtch-ridden pillow was. Parents do not 
know what they do when they leave tender babes alone 
to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a 
friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar voice — when 
they wake screaming — and find none to soothe them — 
what a terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves ! The 
keeping them up till midnight, through candle-light and 
the unwholesome hours, as they are called, — would, I 
am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the better 
caution. — That detestable picture, as I have said, gave 
the fashion to my dreams — if dreams they were — for the 
scene of them was invariably the room in which I lay. 
Had I never met with the picture, the fears would have 
come self-pictured in some shape or other — 

Headless bear, black man, or ape — 

but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It is not 
book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which 



90 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

create these terrors iu children. They can at most but 
give them a direction. Dear Httle T. H., who of all 
children has been brought up with the most scrupulous 
exclusion of every taint of superstition — who was never 
allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be 
told of bad men, or to read or hear of any distressing story 
— finds all this world of fear, from which he has been so 
rigidly excluded ah extra, in his own "thick-coming 
fancies ;" and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse- 
child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of 
tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell- 
damned murderer are tranquillity. 

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimseras dire — stories of 
Oelaeno and the Harpies — may reproduce themselves in 
the brain of superstition — but they were there before. 
They are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in us, 
and eternal. How else should the recital of that, which 
we know in a waking sense to be false, come to affect us 
at all 1 — or 

Names, wliose sense we see not, 

Fray us with things that be not ? 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, 
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon 
us bodily injury 1 — 0, least of all ! These terrors are of 
older standing. They date beyond body — or, without 
the body, they would have been the same. All the 
cruel, tormenting, defined devils in Dante — tearing, 
mangling, choking, stifling, scorching demons — are they 
one half so fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple 
idea of a spirit unembodied following him— 

Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turn'd round, walks on 
And turns no more his head ; 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread.^ 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual 
^ Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 91 

— that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon 
earth — that it predominates in the period of sinless 
infancy — are difficulties, the solution of which might 
afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane con- 
dition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre- 
existence. 

My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I 
confess an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as in 
early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with 
the extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; but I 
know them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude 
their presence, and I fight and grapple with them. For 
the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed to 
say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. They 
are never romantic, seldom even rural. They are of 
architecture and of buildings- — ^ cities abroad, which I 
have never seen and hardly have hoped to see. I have 
traversed, for the seeming length of a natural day, Rome, 
Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their churches, palaces, 
squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an 
inexpressible sense of delight — a map-like distinctness of 
trace, and a day-light vividness of vision, that was all 
but being awake. — I have formerly travelled among the 
Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps, — but they are 
objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recogni- 
tion ; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual 
struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in any 
way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that 
country, but the mountains were gone. The poverty of 
my dreams mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his 
will can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for 
Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, 
and caverns, 

Where Alph, tlie sacred river, runs, 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a 
fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritous and his nereids 
gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaim- 



92 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

ing sons born to Neptune — when my stretch of hnagina- 
tive activity can hardly, in the night season, raise up the 
ghost of a fish-wife. To set my faihires in somewhat a 
mortifying light — it was after reading the noble Dream 
of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon these marine 
spectra ; and the poor plastic power, such as it is, within 
me set to work to humour my folly in a sort of dream 
that very night. Methought I was upon the ocean 
billows at some sea nuptials, riding and mounted high, 
with the customary train sounding their conchs before 
me, (I myself, you may be sure, the leading god), and 
jolhly we went careering over the main, till just where 
Ino Leucothea should have greeted me (I think it was 
Ino) with a white embrace, the billows gradually subsid- 
ing, fell from a sea roughness to a sea calm, and thence 
to a river motion, and that river (as happens in the 
familiarization of dreams) was no other than the gentle 
Thames, which landed me in the wafture of a placid 
wave or two, alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at 
the foot of Lambeth palace. 

The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might 
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical 
faculty residejit in the same soul waking. An old 
gentleman, a friend of mine,, and a humorist, used to 
carry this notion so far, that when he saw any stripling 
of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his 
first question would be, — "Young man, what sort of 
dreams have you 1" I have so much faith in my old 
friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein retm-ning 
upon me, I presently subside into my proper element of 
prose, remembering those eluding nereids, and that 
inauspicious inland landing. 



valentine's day. 93 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! 
Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch- 
flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ; who and 
what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a name, 
typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans 
to seek perfection in union 1 or wert thou indeed a mortal 
prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, 
and decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious personage ! Like 
unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the 
calendar ; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor the 
consigner of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, 
whom all mothers hate ; nor he who hated all mothers, 
Origen ; nor Bishop Bidl, nor Archbishop Parker, nor 
Whitgiffc. Thou comest attended with thousands and 
ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wiugs. 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and 
instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before 
thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those charm- 
ing little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and inter- 
cross each other at every street and turning. The weary 
and all forspent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load 
of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely 
credible to what an extent this ephemeral coiutship is 
carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of 
porters, and detriment of knockers and bell- wires. In these 
little visual interpretations, no emblem is so common as 
the heart, — that little three-cornered exponent of all our 
hopes and fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is 
twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations 
than an opera hat. What authority we have in history 
or mythology for placing the headquarters and metropolis 
of god Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any 



94 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

other, is not very clear ; but 'we have got it, and it will 
serve as well as any other. Else we might easily 
imagine, upon some other system which might have 
prevailed for anything which our pathology knows to the 
contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect 
simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune are 
entirely at your disposal ;" or putting a delicate question, 
" Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow?" But custom 
has settled these things, and awarded the seat of senti- 
ment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate 
neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance. 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and 
all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. 
It " gives a very echo to the throne where hope is 
seated." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle 
within. It is so seldom that just the person we want to 
see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations the 
welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, or 
seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven himself 
was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan, 
so the knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, 
confident, and befitting one that bringeth good tidings. 
It is less mechanical than on other days ; you will say, 
" That is not the post, I am sure." Visions of Love, of 
Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful eternal commonplaces, 
which "having been will always be;" which no school- 
boy nor school-man can write away ; having your irrever- 
sible throne in the fancy and affections — what are your 
transports, when the happy maiden, opening with caj-eful 
finger, careful not to break the emblematic seal, bursts 
upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some type, 
some youthful fancy, not without verses — 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such device, not over-abundant in sense — young 
Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — something 
between wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might 



valentine's day. 95 

almost join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend 
they did, in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily 
forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call 

you so) E. B . E. B. lived opposite a young maiden 

whom he had often seen, unseen, from his parlour window 

in C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, 

and jttst of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and 
just of a temper to bear the disappointment of missing 
one with good humour. E. B. is an artist of no common 
powers ; in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior 
to none ; his name is known at the bottom of many a 
well-executed vignette in the way of his profession, but 
no further ; for E. B. is modest, and the world meets 
nobody half way. E. B. meditated how he could repay 
this young maiden for many a favour which she had done 
him unknown ; for when a kindly face greets us, though 
but passing by, and never knows us again, nor we it, we 
shoidd feel it as an obligation : and E. B. did. This 
good artist set himself at work to please the damsel. It 
was just before Valentine's day three years since. He 
wrought, imseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 
We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper with 
borders — full, not of common hearts and heartless alle- 
gory, but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and 
older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There 
was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not for- 
got, nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang 
in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as 
beseemed — a work, in short, of magic. Iris dipt the 
woof This on Valentine's eve he commended to the 
all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice (0 ignoble trust !) of 
the common post ; but the humble medium did its duty, 
and from his watchful stand the next morning he saw 
the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious 
charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold 
the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after 
one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She 



96 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

danced about, not with light love, or foolish expectations, 
for she had no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that 
could have created those bright images which delighted 
her. It was more like some fairy present ; a God-send, 
as our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received 
where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no 
harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is good 
to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen of 
E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed kindness. 
Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor OiDheha ; 
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to 
all faithfid lovers, who are not too wise to despise old 
legends, but are content to rank themselves humble 
diocesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true church. 



MY RELATIONS. 

I AM arrived at that point of life at which a man may 
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have 
either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — 
and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in "Browne's 
Christian Morals," where he speaks of a man that hath 
lived sixty or seventy years in the world. " In such a com- 
pass of time," he says, " a man may have a close appre- 
hension what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to 
find none who could remember his father, or scarcely the 
friends of his youth, and may sensibly see with what a 
face in no long time Oblivion will look upon himself" 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one 
whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She 
often used to say, that I was the only thing in it which 
she loved ; and, when she thought I was quitting it, she 
grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality quite 
so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. She 
was from morning till night poring over good books and 
devotional exercises. Her favourite volumes were, 



MY RELATIONS. 97 

" Thomas k Kempis," in Stanhope's translation ; and a 
Roman Catholic Prayer Book, with the matins and com- 
jplines regularly set down — terms which I was at that 
time too young to understand. She persisted in reading 
them, although admonished daily concerning their Papis- 
tical tendency ; and went to church every Sabbath, as a 
good Protestant should do. These were the only books 
she studied ; though, I think at one period of her life, 
she told me, she had read with great satisfaction the 
" Adventiu-es of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman." 
Finding the door of the chapel in Essex Street open one 
day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — she went in, 
liked the sermon, and the manner of worship, and 
frequented it at intervals for some time after. She came 
not for doctrinal points, and never missed them. With 
some little asperities in her constitution, which I have 
above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and 
a fine old Christian. . She was a woman of strong sense, 
and a shrewd mind — extraordinary at a rejxirtee; one of 
the few occasions of her breaking silence — else she did 
not much value wit. The only secidar employment I 
remember to have seen her engaged in, was the splitting 
of French beans, and droj^ping them into a china basin of 
fair water. The odoiu: of those tender vegetables to this 
day comes back upon my sense, redolent of soothing 
recollections. Certainly it is the most delicate of cidinary 
oj)erations. 

Male amits, as somebody calls them, I had none — to 
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have 
been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had 
any — to know them. A sister, I think, that should 
have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What 
a comfort, or what a care, may I not have missed in 
her ! — But I have cousins sprinkled about in Hertford- 
shire — besides t^vo, with whom I have been all my life 
in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term 
cousins par excellence. These are James and Bridget 
Elia, They are older than myself by twelve, and ten, 



98 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

years ; and neither of them seems disposed, in matters of 
advice and guidance, to waive any of the prerogatives 
which primogeniture confers. May tliey continue still in 
the same mind; and when they shall be seventy-five, 
and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare them sooner), 
persist in treating me in my grand climacteric precisely 
as a stripling, or younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her 
unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we 
feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, and 
of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire — those 
fine Shandean lights and shades, which make up his 
story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, 
as the fates have given me grace and talent. J. E, 
then — to the eye of a common observer at least — seemeth 
made up of contradictory principles. The genuine child 
of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence — the 
phlegm of my cousin's doctrine, is invariably at war vrith 
his temperament, which is high sanguine. With always 
some fire-new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic 
opponent of innovation, and crier down of everything 
that has not stood the test of age and experiment. With 
a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his 
fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic 
in others ; and, determined by his own sense in every- 
thing, commends you to the guidance of common sense 
on all occasions. — With a touch of the eccentric in all 
which he does or says, he is only anxious that you should 
not commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. 
On my once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of 
a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to 
say so — for the world woidd think me mad. He dis- 
guises a passionate fondness for works of high art 
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the 
pretext of buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm 
may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, 
why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang 
still by his wall ? — is the ball of his sight much more 



MY RELATIONS. 99 

dear to him 1 — or wliat picture -dealer can talk like 
him? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp 
their speculative conclusions to the bent of their in- 
dividual humours, Ms theories are sure to be in diamet- 
rical opposition to his constitution. He is courageous as 
Charles of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person 
upon, principle, as a travelling Quaker. He has been 
preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing 
to the great — the necessity of forms, and manner, to a 
man's getting on in the world. He himself never aims 
at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit that 
would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of 
Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of patience 
— extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to see him 
diu-ing the last seven minutes that his dinner is getting 
ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a more restless 
piece of workmanship than when she moulded this im- 
petuous cousin — and Art never turned out a more 
elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, upon 
his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet and con- 
tentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we are 
placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he 
has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for the 
western road, in a very obstructing manner, at the foot 
of John Murray's Street — where you get in when it is 
empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath 
completed her just freight — a trying three quarters of an 
hoiur to some people. He wonders at your fidgetiness, — 
" where could we be better than we are, tMts sitting, thus 
consulting ? " — " prefers, for his part, a state of rest to 
locomotion," — with an eye all the while upon the coach- 
man, — till at length, waxing out of all patience, at ^our 
ivant of it, he breaks out into a pathetic remonstrance at 
the fellow for detaining us so long over the time which 
he had professed, and declares peremptorily, that "the 
gentleman in the coach is determined to get out, if he 
does not drive on that instant." 



100 THE ESSAYS OE ELIA. 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a 
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain 
of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with logic; 
and seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by 
some process not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough 
to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon certain 
occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man 
as reason ; and wondereth how man came first to have a 
conceit of it — enforcing his negation with all the might 
of reasoning he is master of. He has some specidative 
notions against laughter, and will maintain that laughing 
is not natiu-al to him — when peradventure the next 
moment his lungs shall crow like chanticleer. He says 
some of the best things in the world, and declareth that 
wit is his aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing 
the Eton boys at play in their grounds — What a inty to 
think that these fine ingenuous lads in a feiv years ivill 
all he changed into frivolous Members of Parliament I 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in 
age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that 
which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time 
half way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable 
spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. — It 
does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily 
avocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him 
marching in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly hand- 
some presence, and shining sanguine face, that indicates 
some purchase in his eye — a Claude — or a Hobbima — 
for much of his enviable leism-e is consumed at Christie's 
and Phillips's — or where not, to pick up pictiu-es, and 
such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, 
to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me 
possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with 
business which he must do — assureth me that he often 
feels it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer 
holidays — and goes ofi" — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, 
to Pall MaU — perfectly convinced that he has convinced 
me — while I proceed in my opposite direction timeless. 



MY RELATIONS. 101 

It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor of Indiffer- 
ence doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has 
fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till he 
has found the best — placing it at this distance, and at 
that, but always suiting the focus of your sight to his 
own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch 
the aerial perspective — though you assure him that to you 
the landscape shows much more agreeable without that 
artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight who does not 
only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an 
unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior 
bargains to the present !~The last is always his best hit 
— his " Cynthia of the minute." — Alas ! how many a mild 
Madonna have I known to come in — a Raphael ! — keep 
its ascendency for a few brief moons — then, after certain 
intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to 
the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — adopted 
in turn by each of the Carracci, imder successive lower- 
ing ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its faU — con- 
signed to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a 
Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! — which things 
when I beheld — musing upon the chances and mut- 
abihties of fate below hath made me to reflect upon the 
altered condition of great personages, or that woeful 
Queen of Richard the Second — 

-set fortli in pomp, 



Slie came adorned hither like sweet May ; 
Sent back like Hallowmass or shortest day. 

With great love for yoii, J. E. hath but a limited sym- 
pathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world 
of his own, and makes slender guesses at what passes in 
your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. 
He will tell an old established play-goer, that Mr. Such- 
a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a 
very lively comedian — as a piece of news ! He advertised 
me but the other day of some pleasant green lanes which 
he had found out for me, knowing me to he a great walker, 



102 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

iu my own immediate viciuity — who have hamited the 
identical spot any time these twenty years ! — He has not 
much respect for that class of feelings which goes by the 
name of sentimental. He applies the definition of real 
evil to bodily suflferings exclusively — and rejecteth all 
others as imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the 
bare supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which 
I have never witnessed out of womankind. A con- 
stitutional acuteness to this class of sufferings may in 
part account for this. The animal tribe in particular he 
taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded 
or spur-galled horse is sure to fiaid an advocate in him. 
An over-loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the 
apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend of 
those who have none to care for them. The contem- 
plation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring 
him so, that " all for pity he could die." It will take 
the savour from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, 
for days and nights. With the intense feeling of 
Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of 
pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " true yoke-feUow 
with Time," to have effected as much for the Animal as 
he hath done for the Negro Creation. But my uncon- 
trollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes 
which demand co-operation. He cannot wait. His 
amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day. For this 
reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent 
societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human 
sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, 
and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, — 
while they think of debating. He was black-balled out 
of a society for the Relief of * * * * 

because the fervour of his humanity toUed beyond the 
formal apprehension and creeping processes of his asso- 
ciates. I shall always consider this distinction as a 
patent of nobUity in the Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile 
at, or upbraid, my unique cousin ? Marry, heaven, and 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 103 

all good manners, and the understanding that should be 
between kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the strangenesses of 
this strangest of the Elias — I would not have him in one 
jot or tittle other than he is ; neither would I barter or 
exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, 
and every way consistent kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some 
accotint of my cousin Bridget — if you are not abeady 
surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if 
you are willing to go with us, on an excm-sion which 
we made a summer or two since, in search of more 
cousins — ■ 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 



MAOKERY END, IN HEETFORDSHIRE. 

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long 
year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond 
the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor 
and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such 
tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find 
in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the 
mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my 
celibacy. We agree pretty well in otu- tastes and habits 
— yet so, as " with a difference." We are generally in 
harmony, with occasional bickerings — as it should be 
among near relations. Om' sympathies are rather under- 
stood than expressed ; and once, upon my dissembling a 
tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin 
burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We 
are both great readers in different directions. While I 
am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage 
in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she 
is abstracted in some modern tale or adventure, whereof 
our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously 
fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little con- 



104 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

cern in the progress of events. She must have a story — 
well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life stirring in 
it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations 
of fortune in fiction — and almost in real life — have 
ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of- 
the-way humom-s and opinions — heads with some divert- 
ing twist in them — the oddities of authorship, please me 
most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything that 
sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her 
that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common 
sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can 
pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the 
Religio Medici ; but she must apologize to me for certain 
disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to 
throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear 
favourite of mine, of the last century but one — the 
thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat 
fantastical and original brained, generous Margaret New- 
castle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than 
I could have wished, to have had for her associates and 
mine, free-thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel 
philosophies and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, 
nor accepts, their opinions. That which was good and 
venerable to her, when a child, retains its authority over 
her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with 
her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive ; 
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost 
uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circum- 
stances, it turns out that I was in the right, and my cousin 
in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral 
points ; upon something proper to be done, or let alone ; 
whatever heat of opposition or steadiness of conviction I 
set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run, to be 
brought over to her way of thinking. 

I miTst touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with 
a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 105 

faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse 
of it) of reading in company : at which times she will 
answer yes or no to a question, without fully under- 
standing its purport — which is provoking, and derogatory 
in the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the 
said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the 
most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert her 
upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, 
and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; 
but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, 
she hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less 
seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; 
and she happily missed all that train of female garniture 
which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She 
was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious 
closet of good old English reading, without much selection 
or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and 
wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should 
be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not 
whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished 
by it, but I can answer for it that it makes (if the worst 
come to the worst) most incomparable old maids, t — -' 
' In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; 
but in the teasing accidents and minor perplexities, which 
do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes 
maketh matters worse by an excess of participation. If 
she does not always divide your trouble, upon the jDlea- 
santer occasions of life she is sure always to treble your 
satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or 
upon a visit ; but best, when she goes a journey with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers since 
into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our 
less-known relations in that fine corn country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or 
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in 
some old maps of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — delight- 
fully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. 



106 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a 
great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget ; 
who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten 
years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the re- 
mainder of our joint existences, that we might share 
them in equal division. But that is impossible. The 
house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial 
yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His 
name was G-ladman. My grandmother was a Bniton, 
married to a Field. The G-ladmans and the Brutons are 
still flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields 
are almost extinct. More than forty years had elapsed 
since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of 
that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches 
also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery 
End — ^kindred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to 
conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park 
at Luton in our way from St. Albans, we arrived at the 
spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of 
the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced 
from my recollections, affected me with a pleasure which 
I had not experienced for many a year. For though / 
had forgotten it, ive had never forgotten being there 
together, and we had been talking about Mackery End 
all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked 
with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the 
aspect of a place which, when present, how unlike it 
was to that which I had conjured up so many times 
instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season 
was in the " heart of June," and I could say with the 
poet, 

But thou, that didst appear so fair 
To fond imagination, 

Dost rival in the light of day 
Her delicate creation ! 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 107 

easily remembered her old acquaintance again — some 
altered featirres, of course, a little grudged at. At first, 
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ; but the scene 
soon re-confirmed itself in her affections — and she traversed 
every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the 
orchard, the place where the pigeon -house had stood 
(house and birds were alike flown) — with a breathless 
impatfence of recognition, which was more pardonable 
perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But 
Bridget in some things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the hoixse — and 
that was a difiiculty which to me singly would have been 
insm-mountable ; for I am terribly shy in making myself 
known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, 
stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me ; 
but she soon returned with a creature that might have 
sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the 
youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a 
Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A 
comely brood are the Brutous. Six of them, females, 
were noted as the handsomest young women in the 
county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was 
better than they all — more comely. She was born too 
late to have remembered me. She just recollected in 
early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed 
out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred 
and of cousinship was enough. Those slender ties, that 
prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of 
a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, 
homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were 
as thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and 
bred up together ; were familiar, even to the calling each 
other by our Christian names. So Christians should call 
one another. To have seen Bridget and her — it was like 
the meeting of the two scriptural cousins ! There was a 
grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, 
answering to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which would 
have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We were 



108 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

made welcome by husband, and wife equally — we, and 
our friend tliat was with us. — I had almost forgotten 
him — but B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if 
peradventure he shall read this on the far distant shores 
where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made 
ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of 
our coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native 
wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this 
hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, 
to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother 
and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something 
more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing. — 
With what corresponding kindness we were received by 
them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occa- 
sion, warmed into a thousand half-obhterated recollections 
of things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her 
own — and to the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost 
the only thing that was not a cousin there, — old effaced 
images of more than half-forgotten names and circum- 
stances still crowding back upon her, as words written in 
lemon come out upon exposiu-e to a friendly warmth, — 
when I forget all this, then may my country cousins for- 
get me ; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days 
of weakling infancy I was her tender charge — as I have 
been her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty 
pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hert- 
fordshire. 



MY FIRST PLAY. 

At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, 
of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to hum- 
ble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing- 
office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you 
may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Dnu:y 
— G-arrick's Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it 
without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, 



MY FIRST PLAY. 109 

recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see 
my first -play. The afternoon had been wet, and the 
condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, 
that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart 
did I watch from the window the puddles, from the still- 
ness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired 
cessation ! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the 
glee with which I ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent 
us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of 
Featherstone-buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave 
person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his 
rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, 
the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy ; 
if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow 
somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was 
also known to and visited by Sheridan. It was to his 
house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first 
wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school 
at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were 
present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the 
evening with his harmonious charge. From either of 
these connections it may be inferred that my godfather 
could command an order for the then Drury-lane theatre 
at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those 
cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard 
him say was the sole remuneration which he had received 
for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and 
various avenues of that theatre — and he was content it 
should be so. The honoiu- of Sheridan's familiarity — or 
supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather than 
money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandiloquent, 
yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of 
fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost 
constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an 
oilman's lips !), which my better knowledge since has 
enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they 



110 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

should have been sounded vice versd — but in those young 
years they impressed me with more awe than they would 
now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own 
peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or 
Anglicised, into something like verse verse. By an im- 
posing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, 
he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial 
honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow. 

He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
memory, both for my first orders (Httle wondrous talis- 
mans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, 
but opening to me more than Arabian paradises !) and, 
moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came 
into possession of the only landed property which I could 
ever call my own — situate near the road-way village of 
pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I journeyed 
down to take possession, and planted foot on my own 
ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon 
me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity 1) with larger 
paces over my allotment of three quarters of an acre, 
with its commodious mansion in the midst, with the feel- 
ing of an English freeholder that all betwixt sky and centre 
was my own. The estate has passed into more pnident 
hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncom- 
fortable manager who abolished them !— with one of these 
we went. I remember the waiting at the door — not that 
which is left — but between that and an inner door in 
shelter— when shall I be such an expectant again ! — 
with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house 
accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect, 
the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses 
then was, " Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, 
chase a bill of the play;" — chase joro chuse. But when 
we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a 
heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed 
— the breathless anticipations I endured ! I had seen 
something like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and 



MY FIRST PLAY. Ill 

Cressida, in Eowe's Shakspeare — the tent scene with 
Diomede — and a sight of that plate can always bring 
back in a measure the feeling of that evening. — The 
boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of quality, 
projected over the pit ; and the pilasters reaching down 
were adorned with a gKstening substance (I know not 
what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling— a homely 
fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-candy — yet to my 
raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it 
appeared a glorified candy ! — The orchestra lights at 
length rose, those " fair Am-oras !" Once the bell sounded. 
It was to ring out yet once again — and, incapable of the 
anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resigna- 
tion upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. 
The curtain drew up — I was not past six years old, and 
the play was Artaxerxes ! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — the 
ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. — It 
was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no 
proper interest in the action going on, for I understood 
not its import — but I heard the word Darius, and I was 
in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in 
vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Perse- 
polis for the time, and the biu-ning idol of their devotion 
almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe- 
struck, and believed those significations to be something 
more tlian elemental fires. It was all enchantment and 
a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in 
dreams. — Harlequin's invasion followed; where, I remem- 
ber, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend 
beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, 
and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a 
verity as the legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of 
the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, 
very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed 
by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost— a satiric touch, I 



112 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead — but to my 
apprehension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote 
a piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Har- 
lequins — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden 
sceptre) through countless ages. I saw tlie primeval 
Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of 
white patchwork, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. 
So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. It was 
the Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as 
grave as a judge ; for I remember the hysteric affectations 
of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic 
passion. Robinson Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, 
man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic 
as in the story. — The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe, 
I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should 
have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads 
(seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that 
gape and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round 
Church (my church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was 
from six to seven years old. After the intervention of 
six or seven other years (for at school all play-going was 
inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That 
old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my 
fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with 
the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at 
sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that 
interval what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew 
nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I 
felt all, loved all, wondered all- 
Was nourished, I could not tell how — 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a 
rationalist. The same things were there materially ; but 
the emblem, the reference, was gone ! — The green curtain 
was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the un- 



MODERN GALLANTRY, 113 

folding of which was to bring back past ages, to present 
a " royal ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, 
which was to separate the audience for a given time from 
certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward 
and pretend those parts. The liglits — the orchestra lights 
— came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the 
second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell 
— which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom 
of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at wliich ministered 
to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. 
I thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself, 
and the alteration wliich those many centuries — of six 
short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. — Perhaps it 
was fortimate for me that tlie play of the evening was 
but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop 
some imreasouable expectations, which might have inter- 
fered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon 
after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of 
Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection 
soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; and 
the tlieatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most 
delightful of recreations. 



MODERN GALLANTEY. 

In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are 
pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gal- 
lantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, 
which we are supposed to pay to females, as females. 

I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, 
when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the 
era from which we date our civility, we are but just be- 
ginning to leave off" the very frequent practice of whip- 
ping females in public, in common with the coarsest male 
offenders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut 
I 



114 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

my eyes to the fact that iu England women are still occa- 
sionally — hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer sub- 
ject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife 
across the kennel ; or assists the apple-woman to pick iip 
her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just 
dissi]Dated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler 
life, who would be thouglit in their way notable adepts 
in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they 
are not known, or think themselves not observed — when 
I shall see the traveller for some rich tradesman part 
with his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defence- 
less shoulders of the poor woman, who is passing to her 
parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, 
drenched in the rain — when I shall no longer see a woman 
standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick 
and faint with the exertion, with men about her, seated 
at their ease, and jeering at her distress ; till one, that 
seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest, 
significantly declares " she should be welcome to his seat, 
if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place this 
dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their 
own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have 
not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such 
principle influencing our conduct, when more than one- 
half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world 
shall cease to be performed by women. 

Until that day comes I shall never beheve this boasted 
point to be anything more than a conventional fiction ; a 
pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and 
at a certain time of life, in which both find their account 
equally. 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary 
fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same 
attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 115 

to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear — to the 
woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a for- 
tune, or a title. 

I shall believe it to be something more than a name, 
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company- 
can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, 
and intending to excite, a sneer : — when the phrases 
" antiquated virginity," and such a one has " overstood 
her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise 
immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them 
spoken. 

Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one 
of the Directors of the South Sea company — the same to 
whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has ad- 
dressed a fine sonnet — was the only pattern of consistent 
gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter 
at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I 
owe to his precepts and example whatever there is of the 
man of business (and that is not much) in my composi- 
tion. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. 
Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, 
he was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not 
one system of attention to females in the drawing-room, 
and another in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean 
that he made no distinction. But he never lost sight of 
sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous 
situation. I have seen him stand bareheaded — smile if 
you please — to a poor servant -girl, while she has been 
inquiring of him the way to some street— in such a pos- 
ture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her in 
the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was 
no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after 
women ; but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in 
which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him 
— nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market-woman, 
whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his um- 
brella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive 
no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been 



M 



116 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

a countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld lie 
"would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar- 
woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show 
our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; 
the Sir Oalidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no 
Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had 
long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered 
and yellow cheeks. 

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his 
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Win- 
stanley's daughter of Clapton — who dying in the early 
days of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution 
of perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short 
courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating 
his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches — the com- 
mon gallantries — to which kind of tiling she had hitherto 
manifested no repugnance — but in this instance with no 
effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknow- 
ledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his 
compliments. He could not set it down to caprice, for 
the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. 
When he ventured on the following day, finding her a 
little better humoured, to expostulate with her on her 
coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frank- 
ness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; 
that she could even endure some high-flown comphments ; 
that a young woman placed in her situation had a right 
to expect all sorts of civil things said to her ; that she 
hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insin- 
cerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young 
women ; but that — a httle before he had commenced his 
compliments — she had overheard him by accident, in 
rather rough language, rating a young woman, who had 
not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed time, 
and she thought to herself, " As I am Miss Susan Win- 
stanley, and a young lady — a reputed beauty, and known 
to be a fortune — I can have my choice of the finest 
speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 117 

is courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one 
(naming the milliner), — and had failed of bringing home 
the cravats to the appointed hour — though perhaps I liad 
sat up half the night to forward them — what sort of com- 
pliments should I have received then 1 — And my woman's 
pride came to my assistance ; and I thought, that if it 
were only to do me honour, a female, like myself, might 
have received handsomer usage ; and I was determined 
not to accept any fine speeches to the compromise of that 
sex, the belonging to which was after all my strongest 
claim and title to them." 

I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a 
just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her 
lover ; and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncom- 
mon strain of courtesy, which through life regulated the 
actions and behaviour of my friend towards all of woman- 
kind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this season- 
able lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. 

I wish the whole female world would entertain the 
same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. 
Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent 
gallantry ; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same 
man — a pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold con- 
tempt, or rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female 
mistress — the disparager and despiser of his no less female 
aunt, or unfortunate— still female — maiden cousin. Just 
so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, 
in whatever condition placed — her hand-maid, or depend- 
ent — she deserves to have diminished from herself on 
that score ; and probably will feel the diminution, when 
youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from 
sex, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should 
demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect 
for her as she is a woman ; — and next to that — to be 
respected by him above all other women. But let her 
stand upon her female character as upon a foundation ; 
and let the attentions, incident to individual preference, 
be so many pretty additaments and ornaments — as many, 



118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

and as fanciful, as you please — to that main structure. 
Let her first lesson be with sweet Susan Winstanley — to 
reverence her sex. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNEE TEMPLE. 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life, 
in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its 
fountains, its river, I had almost said — for in those yomig 
years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream 
that watered oiu: pleasant places ? — these are of my oldest 
recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself 
more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of 
Spenser, where he speaks of this spot : — 

There when they came, whereas those Ijricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 
What a transition for a coimtryman visiting London for 
the first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or 
Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent 
ample squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheer- 
ful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from 
three sides, overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more 
fantastically-shrouded one, named of Harcom-t, with the 
cheerful Crown-Oflfice-row (place of my kindly engendure), 
right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden- 
foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems 
but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man 
would give something to have been born in such places. 
What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 119 

where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and 
fall, how many times ! to the astoimdment of the young 
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess 
at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail 
the wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air had 
the now almost effaced sun-dials, witli tlieir moral in- 
scriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they 
measiu-ed, and to take their revelations of its flight 
immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with 
the fountain of liglit ! How would the dark line steal 
imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager 
to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an evan- 
escent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! 

Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em- 
bowehnents of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness 
of commvmication, compared with the simple altar-like 
structure and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It 
stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it 
almost everywhere vanished ? If its business -use be 
superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, 
its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It 
spoke of moderate labours, of pleasiu'es not protracted 
after smiset, of temperance, and good hom's. It was the 
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam 
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the 
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring 
by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, 
for flocks to pastm'e and be led to fold by. The shepherd 
" carved it out quaintly in the sun ;^' and, turning philo- 
sopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes 
more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device 
of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of 
artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. 
I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are 
full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. 



120 THE ESSAYS OE ELIA. 

They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of 
fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden 
scenes : — 

What woridrous life is this I lead ! , 

Kipe apples drop about my head. 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 

Withdraws into its happiness. 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find ; 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds and other seas ; 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide ; 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings. 

Then whets and claps its silver wings, 

And, till prepared for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light 

How well the skilful gardener drew 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new 

Where, from above, the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 

And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as Ave. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ?^ 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up or 
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little 
green nook behind the South-Sea HoiTse, what a freshness 
it gives to the dreary pile ! Foiu: little winged marble 
boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever 
fresh streams from their innocent-wanton lips in the square 

1 From a copy of verses entitled "The Garden." 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 121 

of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than they were 
figured. They are gone, and the spring choked np. The 
fashion, they teU me, is gone by, and these things are 
esteemed childish. Why not, then, gratify children, by 
letting them stand 1 Lawyers, I suppose, were children 
once. They are awakening images to them at least. Why 
must everything smack of man, and mannish ? Is the 
world all grown up 1 Is childhood dead ? Or is there 
not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the 
child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments ? 
The figiu-es were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living 
figiu-es, that still flitter and chatter about that area, less 
Gothic in appearance 1 or is the splutter of their hot 
rhetoric one-half so refreshing and innocent as the little 
cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered 1 

They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner 
Temple-hall, and the library front ; to assimilate them, I 
suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all 
resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood 
over the former? a stately arms! and who has removed 
those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end 
of the Paper-buildings 1 — my first hint of allegory ! They 
must accoimt to me for these things, which I miss so 
greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the 
parade ; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps 
which made its pavement awful ! It is become common 
and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to 
themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They 
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress 
asserted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you 
when you passed them. We walk on even terms with 

their successors. The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready 

to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie 
a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar diu-st 
have mated Thomas Coventry 1 — whose person was a 
quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square 
as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, in- 



122 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

flivertible from his way as a moving column, the scare- 
crow of his inferiors, the browbeater of equals and 
siiperiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he 
came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they 
would have shiumed an Elisha bear. His growl was as 
thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth 
or in rebuke ; his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, 
the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravat- 
ing the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each 
majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by 
pinches, but a palmful at once, — diving for it under 
the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; 
his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinc- 
tured by dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of 
obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; 
the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, 
and had nothing but that and their benchership in com- 
mon. In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a staimch 
tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — 
for Coventry had a rough spinous humour — at the political 
confederates of his associate, which rebounded from the 
gentle bosom of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. 
You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of 
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. 
I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. "When 
a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or 
otherwise, cam« before him, he ordinarily handed it over, 
with a few instructions, to his man Lovel, who was a quick 
little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the 
light of natural understanding, of which he had an un- 
common share. It was incredible what repute for talents 
S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy 
man ; a child might pose him in a minute — indolent and 
procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men woidd give 
him credit for vast application, in spite of himself. He 
was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. He 



THE OLD BENCHERS OE THE INNER TEMPLE. 123 

never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his sword 
— they wore swords then — or some otlaer necessary part of 
his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these 
occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was 
anything which he could speak unseasonably, he was 
sure to do it. — He was to dine at a relative's of the 
unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her execution ; — 
and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable hallucina- 
tions, i)efore he set out schooled him, with great anxiety, 
not in any possible manner to allude to her story that 
day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. 
He had not been seated in the parlour, where the com- 
pany was expecting the dinner simimons, four minutes, 
when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, 
looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles — an 
ordinary motion with him — observed, " it was a gloomy 
day," and added, " Miss Blandy must be hanged by this 
time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. 
Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his 
time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters 
pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and 
embarrassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. 
He never laughed. He had the same good fortune among 
the female world, — was a known toast with the ladies, 
and one or two are said to have died for love of him — I 
suppose, because he never trifled or talked gallantly with 
them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common attentions. 
He had a fine face and person, but wanted, methought, 
the spirit that should have shown them off with advantage 
to the women. His eye lacked lustre. — Not so, thought 

Susan P ; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was 

seen, in the cold evening time, miaccomiDanied, wetting 

the pavement of B d Row, with tears that fell in 

drops which might be heard, because her friend had died 
that day — he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless 
passion for the last forty years — a passion which years 
could not extinguish or abate ; nor the long-resolved, yet 
gently-enforced, puttings off of imrelenting bachelorhood 



124 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P , 

thou hast now thy friend in heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of 
that name. He passed his youth in contracted circum- 
stances, which gave him early those parsimonious habits 
which in after life never forsook him j so that with one 
windfall or another, about the time I knew him, he was 
master of four or five himdred thousand poimds; nor did he 
look or walk worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy 
house opposite the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet-street. 
J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for 
what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an agree- 
able seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent above a 
day or two at a time in the summer; but preferred, 
during the hot months, standing at his window in this 
damp, close, well -like mansion, to watch, as he said, 
" the maids drawing water all day long." I suspect he 
had his within-door reasons for the preference. Hie cttrrus 
et arma fuere. He might think his treasm'es more safe. 
His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a 
close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a 
miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought 
discredit upon a character which cannot exist without 
certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of piu-- 
pose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, 
so easily despise him. By taking care of the pence he is 
often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that 
leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an im- 
measurable distance behind. 0. gave away .30,000^. at 
once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His house- 
keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table 
of a gentleman. He would know who came in and who 
went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never 
suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew 
what he was worth in the world ; and having but a com- 
petency for his rank, which his indolent habits were 
little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 125 

if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took 
care of everything. He was at once his clerk, his good 
servant, his dresser, his friend, his " flapper," his guide, 
stop-watch, auditor, treasiu-er. He did nothing without 
considting Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting 
and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost too 
much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the 
world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a 
master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a moment that 
he was a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible 
and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and " would 
strike." In the cause of the oppressed he never considered 
inequalities, or calculated the number of his opponents. 
He once ■\vrested a sword out of the hand of a man of 
quality that had drawn upon him, and pommelled him 
severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered 
insult to a female — an occasion upon which no odds 
against him could have prevented the interference of 
Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to the 
same person modestly to excuse his interference — for L. 
never forgot rank where something better was not con- 
cerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had 
a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to 
resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), 
possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to 
Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of 
Paris to admiration, by the dint of natuxal genius 
merely ; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet 
toys, to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls 
with equal facility ; made punch better than any man of 
his degree in England ; had the merriest quips and con- 
ceits ; and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and 
inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the 
angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest 
comjDanion as Mr. Izaak "Walton would have chosen to go 
a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay 
of his facidties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of 



126 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

human weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of what he 
was," — yet even then his eye would light up upon the 
mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he 
would say, in Bayes — " was uj^on the stage nearly 
throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a 
bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former 
life, and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln, to go 
to service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, 
and how he returned, after some few years' absence, in his 
smart new livery, to see her, and slie blest herself at the 
change, and could Iiardly be brought to believe tliat it 
was " her own bairn." And then, the excitement sub- 
siding, he would weep, till I have wished that sad second- 
childhood might have a mother still to lay its head upon 
her lap. But the common mother of us all in no long 
time after received him gently into hers. 

With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon 
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to 
make up a third. They did not walk linked arm-in- 
arm in those days — " as now our stout triumvirs sweep 
the streets," — but generally -with, both hands folded 
behind them for state, or with one at least behind, the 
other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a 
prepossessing man. He had that in his face which you 
could not term unhappiness ; it rather implied an incapa- 
city of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even 
to whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but 
without his sourness) that of our great philanthropist. 
I know that he did good acts, but I could never make 
out what he ivas. Contemporary with these, but subordi- 
nate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity — he walked 
biuly and square — in imitation, I think, of Coventry — 
howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his prototype. 
Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the strength of 
being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a 
bishop. When the account of his year's treasurership 
came to be audited, the following singailar charge was 
unanimously disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 127 

Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings for stuff to 
poison the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was 
old Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon him the 
ordering of the bills of fare for the i3arliament chamber, 
where the benchers dine — answering to the combination 
rooms at College — much to the easement of his less 
epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — 
Then -Read, and Twopenny — Read, good-humoured and 
personable — Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and 
felicitous in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, 
Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many must re- 
member him (for he was rather of later date) and his 
singular gait, which was performed by three steps and a 
jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts, 
like that of a child beginning to walk ; the jimip com- 
paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he 
learned this figm'e, or what occasioned it, I could never 
discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
to answer the purpose any better than common walking. 
The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him 
upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would 
often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as 
Brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His 
features were spiteful. I have heard that he would 
pinch his cat's ears extremely when anything had 
offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson, he was 
called — was of this period. He had the reputation of 
possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of 
his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate 
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage 
of the cook applying to him, with much formality of 
apology, for instructions how to write down edge bone of 
beef in his bill of commons. He was supposed to know, 
if any man in the world did. He decided the ortho- 
graphy to be — as I have given it — fortifying his authority 
with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple 
(for the time) learned and happy. Some do spell it yet, 
perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblance be- 



128 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

tween its shape and that of the aspirate so denominated. 
I had almost forgotten Mingay mth the iron hand — but 
he was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by 
some accident, and supplied it with a grapphng-hook, 
which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected 
the substitute before I was old enough to reason whether 
it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment 
it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking per- 
son ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an 
emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in the fore- 
head of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres, who 
walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of the reign 
of George the Second, closes my imperfect recollections of 
the old benchers of the Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled 1 Or, if the like 
of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye inex- 
plicable, half- understood appearances, why comes in 
reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or 
gloomy, that enshrouded you ? "Why make ye so sorry a 
figure in my relation, who made up to me — to my 
childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? In those 
days I saw Gods, as " old men covered with a mantle," 
walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idol- 
atry perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of 
legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, 
for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome 
superstition — the seeds of exaggeration will be busy 
there, and vital — from every- day forms educing the 
unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there 
will be light when the grown world flounders about in 
the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, 
and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, 
imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally 
to fly the earth. 

P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect 
memory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 129 

protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! 
This gentleman, E. N. informs me, married young, and 
losing his lady in childbed, within the first year of their 
miion, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of 
which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In 
what a new light does this place his rejection (0 call it 

by a gentler name !) of mild Susan P , unravelling 

into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy and 
retiring character ! Henceforth let no one receive the 
narratives of Elia for true records ! They are, in truth, 
but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not verities — or 
sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of 
history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and 
would have done better perhaps to have consulted that 
gentleman before he sent these incondite reminiscences to 
press. But the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his 
old and his new masters — would but have been puzzled at 
the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots 
not, peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have 
arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of 
their existence beyond the Gentleman's — his fiu-thest 
monthly excursions in this nature having been long con- 
fined to the holy ground of honest Urban's obituary. 
May it be long before his own name shall help to swell 
those columns of unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, ye 
New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, 
for he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. 
Should infirmities overtake him — he is yet in green and 
vigorous senility — make allowances for them, remember- 
ing that " ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged 
Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! 
so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate yoiu- church 
and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in default of more 
melodious quiristers, impoisoned hop about your walks ! 
so may the fresh-coloiued and cleanly nursery-maid, who, 
by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, 
drop her prettiest blushing courtesy as ye pass, reductive 
of juvenescent, emotion ! so may the yoimkers of this 
K 



130 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the 
same superstitious veneration with which the child Elia 
gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnized the parade 
before ye ! 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its 
origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter- 
state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a 
full meal was something more than a common blessing ! 
when a belly-full was a wind-fall, and looked like a spe- 
cial providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with 
which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty 
of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, 
existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is 
not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of 
food — the act of eating — should have had a particular 
expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from 
that implied and silent gratitude with which we are ex- 
pected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other 
various gifts and good things of existence. 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty 
other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. 
I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for 
a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved 
problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual 
repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before Shakspeare 
■ — a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading 
the Fairy Queen ? — but the received ritual having pre- 
scribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manduca- 
tion, I shall confine my observations to the experience 
which I have had of the grace, properly so called ; com- 
mending my new scheme for extension to a niche in 
the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part 
heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend 'Homo 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 131 

Humauus, for the use of a certain snug congregation 
of Utopian Eabelsesian Christians, no matter where 
assembled. 

The form, then, of the benediction before eating has 
its beauty at a iDoor man's table, or at tlie simple and un- 
provocative repast of children. It is here that the grace 
becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who 
hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day 
or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the 
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into 
whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could 
never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The 
proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is barely 
contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his 
daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their coiurses 
are perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be pre- 
ceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to 
appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considera- 
tions. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over 
a dish of j^lain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to 
reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating ; when 
he shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with 
the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or 
turtle. When I have sate (a varus hos2oes) at rich men's 
tables, with the savoury soup and messes steaming up the 
nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests with desire 
and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of 
that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous 
orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a re- 
ligious sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter 
out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epi- 
curism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The in- 
cense which rises round is pagan, and the belly-god inter- 
cepts it for its own. The very excess of the provision 
beyond the needs, takes away all sense of proportion 
between the end and means. The giver is veiled by his 
gifts. ■ You are startled at the injustice of returning 



132 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

thanks — for what 1 — for having too much while so many- 
starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce con- 
sciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. 
I have seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame 
— a sense of the co-presence of circumstances which un- 
hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone put on for 
a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into 
his common voice ! helping himself or his neighbour, as if 
to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not 
that the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most con- 
scientious in the discharge of the duty ; but he felt in his 
inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the 
viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational 
gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians 
sit down at table like hogs to their troughs, without 
remembering the Giver? — no — I would have them sit 
down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like 
hogs. Or, if their appetites must run riot, and they must 
pamper themselves with delicacies for which east and west 
are ransacked, I would have them postpone their bene- 
diction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; when 
the still small voice can be heard, and the reason of the 
grace returns — with temperate diet and restricted dishes. 
Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanks- 
giving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he 
kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he 
put into the mouth of Celseno anything but a blessing. 
We may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some 
kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and 
inferior gratitude : but the proper object of the grace is 
sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not delicacies ; the 
means of life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. 
With what frame or composure, I wonder, can a city 
chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great HaU- 
feast, when he knows that his last concluding pious 
word — and that in all probability, the sacred name which 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 133 

he preaches — is but the signal for so many impatient 
harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as little 
sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those 
Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the good man himself does 
not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensu- 
ous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar 
sacrifice. 

ThS severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is 
the banquet which Satan, in the "Paradise Regained," 
provides for a temptation in the wilderness : 

A table richly spread in regal mode 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savonr ; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Gris-amlDer-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 
Pontus,and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
would go down without the recommendatory preface of a 
benediction. They are like to be short graces where the 
devil plays the host. I am afraid the poet wants his 
usual decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the old 
Roman luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cambridge 1 This 
was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole 
banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accompani- 
ments altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted, 
holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which the 
cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple 
wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed 
him in his dreams, from his dreams might have been 
taught better. To the temperate fantasies of the famished 
Son of God, what sort of feasts presented themselves ? — 
He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats 1 — 

Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood. 
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 



134 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ; 

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought. 

He saw the prophet also how he fled 

Into the desert, and how there he slej)t 

Under a juniper ; then how awaked 

He found his supper on the coals prepared. 

And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 

And ate the second time after repose, 

The strengtli whereof sufficed him forty days : 

Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, ■ 

Or as a guest with Daniel at his j)ulse. 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two 
visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of 
what is called the grace have been the most fitting and 
pertinent ? 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practically 
I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve 
something awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of 
one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, 
which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends 
of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit 
blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becom- 
ing gratitude ; but the moment of ajDpetite (the judicious 
reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season 
for that exercise. The Quakers, who go about their busi- 
ness of every description with more calmness than we, have 
more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have 
always admired their silent grace, and the more because 
I have observed their applications to the meat and drink 
following to be less passionate and sensual than ours. 
They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. 
They eat, as a horse bolts his chojDped hay, with indiffer- 
ence, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither 
grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his 
bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not in- 
different to the kinds of it. Those vmctuous morsels of 
deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispassion- 
ate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 135 

to know "what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher 
matters. I shrink instinctively from one wlio professes 
to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character 

in the tastes for food. C ■ holds that a man cannot 

liave a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not 
certain but he is right. With the decay of my first 
innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those 
innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost 
their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which 
still seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient 
and quenilous under culinary disappointments, as to come 
home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some 
savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. 
Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen failures — 
puts me beside my tenor.^ — The author of the Rambler 
used to make inarticidate animal noises over a favourite 
food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded 
by the grace 1 or would the pious man have done better 
to postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing 
might be contemplated with less perturbation ? I quarrel 
with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face against 
those excellent things, in their way, jollity and feasting. 
But as these exercises, however laudable, have little in 
them of grace or gracefulness, a man shoidd be sure, be- 
fore he ventures so to grace them, that while he is pre- 
tending his devotions otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing 
his hand to some great fish — his Dagon — with a special 
consecration of no art but the fat tureen before him. 
Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of 
angels and children ; to the roots and severer repasts of 
the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly acknow- 
ledged, refection of the poor and humble man : but at the 
heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they 
become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the 
occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better befit- 
ting organs woidd be which children hear tales of, at 
Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too 
curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our 



136 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

application to them, or engross too great a portion 
of those good things (which should be common) to onr 
share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To be 
thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion, is 
to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this 
truth is what makes the performance of this duty so cold 
and spiritless a service at most tables. In houses where 
the grace is as indispensable as the napkin, who has not 
seen that never-settled question arise, as to who shall say 
it ? while the good man of the house and the visitor 
clergyman, or some other guest belike of next authority, 
from years or gravity, shall be bandying about the office 
between them as a matter of compliment, each of them 
not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an equivo- 
cal duty from his own shoulders ? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist 
divines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune 
to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. 
Before the first cup was handed round, one of these 
reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due 
solemnity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems 
it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short 
prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did 
not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, 
with little less importance he made answer that it was 
not a custom known in his church : in which courteous 
evasion the other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or 
in compliance with a weak brother, the supplementary or 
tea grace was waived altogether. "With what spirit 
might not Lucian have painted two priests, of his re- 
ligion, playing into each other's hands the compliment 
of performing or omitting a sacrifice, — the hungry God 
meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nostrils 
hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) 
going away in the end without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want re- 
verence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the 
charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the 



DREAM CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 137 

epigrammatic conciseness with which that equivocal wag 
(but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., when impor- 
tuned for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering 
down the table, "Is there no clergyman here?" — sig- 
nificantly adding, " Thank G — ." Nor do I think our 
old form at school quite pertinent, where we were used 
to preface our bald bread-and-cheese-suppers with a pre- 
amble, connecting with that humble blessing a recognition 
of benefits the most awful and overwhelming to the 
imagination which religion has to offer. Non tunc illis 
erat locus. I remember we were put to it to reconcile 
the phrase "good creatures," upon which the blessing 
rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully understanding 
that expression in a low and animal sense, — till some one 
recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden days of 
Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to have smok- 
ing joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till 
some pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, 
rather than the palates, of the children, commuted our 
flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco rej-erens — 
trousers instead of mutton. 



DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 

Childeen love to listen to stories about their elders, 
when they were children ; to stretch their imagination to 
the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, 
whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my 
little ones crept about me the other evening to hear 
about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great 
house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in 
which they and papa lived) which had been the scene — 
so at least it was generally believed in that part of the 
country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately 
become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in 
the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the 



138 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly 
carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great 
hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts ; till 
a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble 
one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon 
it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, 
too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to 
say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother 
Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, 
though she was not indeed the mistress of this great 
house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some 
respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) 
committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a 
newer and more fashionable mansion which he had pur- 
chased somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still she 
lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and 
kept u]) the dignity of the great house in a sort while she 
lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly 
pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried 
away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, 
and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry 
away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, 
and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. 
Here John smiled, as much as to say, " that would be 
foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came 
to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the 
poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood 
for many miles round, to show their respect for her 
memory, because she had been such a good and religious 
woman ; so good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery 
by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. 
Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a 
tall, upright, graceful person their great - grandmother 
Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed 
the best dancer — here Alice's little right foot played an 
involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it 
desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, 
till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her 



DREAM CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 139 

down with pain ; but it could never bend her good 
spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, 
because she was so good and religious. Then I told how 
she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the 
great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition 
of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and 
down the great staircase near where she slept, but she 
said '" those innocents would do her no harm ; " and 
how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had 
my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so 
good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. 
Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look 
courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holy- 
days, where I in particular used to spend many hours by 
m^yself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve 
Caesars, that had been Emperors of Eome, till the old 
marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned 
into marble with them ; how I never could be tired with 
roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty 
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, 
and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost nibbed 
out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, 
which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then 
a solitary gardening man woidcl cross me — and how the 
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my 
ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden 
fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more 
pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy- 
looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red 
berries, and the fir-apples, which were good for nothing 
but to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass with 
all the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the 
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too 
along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful 
warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to and fro 
in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here 
and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the 



140 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

water in silent state, as if it mocked, at their impertinent 
friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy - idle 
diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and such - like common baits of 
children. Here John slyly deposited back vipon the plate 
a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he 
had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed 
willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. 
Then, in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, 
though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand- 
children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to 
love their uncle, John L , because he was so hand- 
some and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; 
and, instead of moping about in solitary comers, like 
some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse 
he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, 
and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, 
and join the hunters when there were any out — and yet 
he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had 
too much spirit to be always pent up within their 
boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to man's 
estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of 
everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most 
especially ; and how he used to carry me upon his back 
when I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit 
older than me— many a mile when I could not walk for 
pain ; — and how in after life he became lame-footed too, 
and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for 
him when he was impatient and in pain, nor remember 
sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I 
was lame-footed ; and how when he died, though he had 
not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a 
great while ago,- such a distance there is betwixt life and 
death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty 
well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; 
and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, 
and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I 
missed him all day long, and knew not till then how 



DREAM CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 141 

much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and 
I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive 
again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled some- 
times), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy 
without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been 
when the doctor took off his limb.- — Here the children 
fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which 
they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, 
and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell 
them some stories about their pretty dead mother. 
Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, 
sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I com'ted the 
fair Alice W — n ; and as much as children could vmder- 
stand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, 
and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly turning to 
Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes 
with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in 
doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose 
that bright hair was ; and while I stood . gazing, both the 
children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, 
and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful 
features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, with- 
out speech, strangely impressed upon me the efiects of 
speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we 
children at all. The children of Alice call Bartnun 
father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. 
We are only what might have been, and must wait upon 
the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we 
have existence, and a name " and immediately awak- 
ing, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm- 
chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful 
Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. (or James 
Elia) was gone for ever. 



142 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 

IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH "WALES. 

My dear F. — When I think how welcome the sight of a 
letter from the world where you were born must be to you 
in that strange one to which you have been transplanted, 
I feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. 
But, indeed, it is no easy eifort to set about a correspond- 
ence at our distance. The weary world of waters 
between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to 
conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across 
it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's 
thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for pos- 
terity; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's super- 
scriptions, " Alcander to Strephon in the shades." 
Cowley's Post-Angel is no more than would be ex- 
pedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at 
Lombard -street, and in twenty -four hours a friend in 
Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It 
is only like whispering through a long trumpet. But 
suppose a tube let down from the moon, with yourself at 
one end and the man at the other ; it woidd be some 
balk to the spirit of conversation, if you knew that the 
dialogue exchanged with that interesting theosophist 
would take two or three revolutions of a higher luminary in 
its passage. Yet, for aught I know, you may be some 
parasangs nigher that primitive idea — Plato's man — than 
we iii England here have the honoiu* to reckon ourselves. 
Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics ; 
news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all 
non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves, 
but treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — And first, 
for news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I 
suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security 
can I have that what I now send you for truth shall not. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 143 

before you get it, unaccountably turn into a lie ? For 
instance, our mutual friend P. is at this present writing 
— my Now — in good health, and enjoys a fair share of 
worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is 
natural and friendly. But at this present reading — your 
Now — he may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be 
hanged, which in reason ought to abate something of your 
transport [i.e., at hearing he was well, etc.), or at least 
considerably to modify it. I am going to the play this 
evening, to have a laugh with Munden. You have no 

theatre, I think you told me, in your land of d d 

realities. You naturally lick your lips, and envy me my 
felicity. Think but a moment, and you will correct the 
hatefid emotion. Why, it is Simday morning with you, 
and 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand solecism 
of two presents, is in a degree common to all postage. 
But if I sent you word to Bath or Devizes, that I was 
expecting the aforesaid treat this evening, though at the 
moment you received the intelligence my full feast of fun 
would be over, yet there would be for a day or two after, 
as you would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my 
mental palate, which would give rational encouragement 
for you to foster a portion, at least, of the disagreeable 
passion, which it was in part my intention to produce. 
But ten months hence, your envy or your sympathy would 
be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. Not 
only does truth, in these long intervals, unessence herself, 
but (what is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction, 
for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the 
voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put upon you, 

some three years since, of Will Weatherall having 

married a servant-maid ! I remember gravely consulting 
you how we were to receive her — for Will's wife was in 
no case to be rejected ; and your no less serious replica- 
tion in the matter ; how tenderly you advised an ab- 
stemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, 
with a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the 
carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence ; 



144 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of 
sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and mops, could, with 
propriety, be introduced as subjects; whether the con- 
scious avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not 
have a worse look than the taking of them casually in our 
way ; in what manner we should carry ourselves to our 
maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall being by ; whether 
we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of respect 
for Will's wife, by treating Becky with our customary 
chiding before her, or by an unusual deferential civility 
paid to Becky, as to a person of great worth, but thrown 
by the caprice of fate into a humble station. There were 
difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me 
the favour to state with the precision of a lawyer, united 
to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at 
your solemn pleadings, when lo ! while I was valuing my- 
self upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, 
the devil in England, jealous possibly of any lie-children 
not his own, or working after my copy, has actually in- 
stigated our friend (not three days since) to the commission 
of a matrimony, which I had only conjiu-ed up for your 
diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's 
maid. But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my 
dear F., that news from me must become history to you ; 
which I neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for 
reading. No person, under a diviner, can, with any 
prospect of veracity, conduct a correspondence at such an 
arm's length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus inter- 
change intelligence with eff'ect ; the epoch of the writer 
(Habakkuk) falling in with the true present time of the 
receiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. 
This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot, 
or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it 
almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is 
the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled 
at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling 
somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 145 

spot, or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so 
fantastically and invitingly over a stream — was it 1 — or a 
rock 1 — no matter — but the stillness and the repose, after 
a weary journey, 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his 
Lordship's hot, restless life, so took his fancy tliat he 
could imagine no place so proper, in tlie event of his 
death, to lay his bones in. This was all very natural and 
excusable as a sentiment, and shows his character in a 
very ■5)leasing light. But wlien from a passing sentiment 
it came to be an act ; and when, by a positive testa- 
mentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all 
that way from England ; who was there, some desperate 
sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the question, 
"Why could not his Lordship have found a spot as solitary, 
a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent, with a 
stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, 
or in Devon? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, 
freighted, entered at the Custom House (startling the 
tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Con- 
ceive it pawed about and handled between the rude jests 
of tarpaulin ruffians — a thing of its delicate textiure — the 
salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged 
lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have 
some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over 
in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint 
Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's 
purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. 
Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say 1 
— I have not the map before me — jostled upon four men's 
shoulders — baiting at this town — stopping to refresh at 
t'other village — waiting a passport here, a license there ; 
the sanction of the magistracy in this district, the con- 
currence of the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length 
it arrives at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a 
brisk sentiment into a feature of silly pride or tawdry 
senseless affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., 
I am afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as 
quite seaworthy. 

L 



146 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which though con- 
temptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which 
should irradiate a right friendly epistle — your puns and 
small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in 
their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of 
being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce 
endure to be transported by hand from this room to the 
next. Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their 
nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmo- 
sphere of the bystanders : or this last is the fine slime of 
Nilus — the melior litUts — whose maternal recipiency is as 
necessary as the sol 'pater to their equivocal generation. 
A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack 
with it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavour 
than you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried in some 
instances to palm off" a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, 
and has it answered % Not but it was new to his hearing, 
but it did not seem to come new from you. It did not 
hitch in. It was like picking up at a village ale-house a 
two days'-old newspaper. You have not seen it before, 
but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort 
of merchandize above all requires a quick return. A 
pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. 
The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce 
thunder. A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. 
A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a 
mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if 
the polished surface were two or three minutes (not to 
speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in giving back 
its copy % 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. When 
I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. 
Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I 
see Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruit- 
less lantern. What must you be willing by this time to 
give for the sight of an honest man ! You must almost 
have forgotten how lue look. And tell me what your 
Sydneyites do ? are they th**v*ng all day long 1 Merci- 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 147. 

ful Heaven ! what property can stand against sncli a de- 
predation ! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they 
keep their primitive simplicity nn- Europe -tainted, with 
those little short fore puds, looking like a lesson framed 
by natiu-e to the pick-pocket ! Marry, for diving into 
fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori ; but if the 
hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair 
of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony. 
We hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray 
is it true that the young Spartans among you are born 
with six fingers, which spoils their scanning 1 — It must 
look very odd 3 but use reconciles. For their scansion, it 
is less to be regretted ; for if they take it into their heads 
to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part 
of them, vile plagiarists. Is there much difference to see, 
too, between the son of a th**f and the grandson 1 or 
where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach in three or in 
four generations 1 I have many questions to put, but ten 
Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it 
will take to satisfy my scruples. Do you grow your own 
hemp? — What is your staple trade, — exclusive of the 
national profession, I mean ? Your locksmiths, I take it, 
are some of your great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when 
we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old con- 
tiguous windows, in pump -famed Hare Court in the 
Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet corner 1 — 
Why did 1 1 — with its complement of four poor elms, from 
whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, 1 
picked my first ladybirds ! My heart is as dry as that 
spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert 
to the space that is between us ; a length of passage 
enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English 
letters before they can reach you. But while I talk I 
think you hear me, — thoughts dallying with vain sur- 
mise — 

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away. 



148 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so 
as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget 
walks on crutches. Girls whom you left children have 
become sage matrons while you are tarrying there. The 
blooming Miss W— r (you remember Sally W — r) called 
upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks whom you 
knew die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death 
was wearing out, — I stood ramparted about with so many 
healthy friends. The departure of J. "W., two springs 
back, corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer 
has been busy. If you do not make haste to return, 
there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

I LIKE to meet a sweep — imderstand me — not a grown 
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attract- 
ive — but one of those tender novices, blooming through 
their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite 
effaced from the clieek — such as come forth with the 
dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional 
notes sounding like the peejo-joee29 of a young sparrow ; 
or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, 
in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the 
sunrise 1 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — 
poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth — 
these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without 
assumption ; and from their little pulpits (the tops of 
chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, 
preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to 
witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than one's- 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 149 

self, enter, one knew not by what process, into what 
seemed the fauces Averni — to pursue him in imagination, 
as he went sounding on through so many dark stifling 
caverns, horrid shades ! to shudder with the idea that 
"now, surely he must be lost for ever!" — to revive 
at hearing his feeble shout of discovered day-light- — and 
then (0 fulness of delight !) running out of doors, to 
come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge 
in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious 
like some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I 
seem to remember having been told, that a bad sweep 
was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which 
way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, certainly ; 
not much unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, 
where the "Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in 
his hand, rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in 
thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny, — it is 
better to give him two-pence. If it be starving weather, 
and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a 
pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be super- 
added, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a 
tester. 

There is a composition, the ground-work of which I 
have understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras. 
This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered 
with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes 
a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how 
thy palate may relish it ; for myself, with every defer- 
ence to the judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of 
mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers in London) 
for the vending of this " wholesome and pleasant bever- 
age," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approach- 
est' Bridge Street — the only Salopian house — I have 
never yet adventured to dip my own particular lip in a 
basin of his commended ingredients — a cautious premoni- 
tion to the olfactories constantly whispering to me, that 
my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline 



150 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed 
in dietetical elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformation of the 
organ it happens, but I have always found that this com- 
position is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young 
chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles (sassafras is 
slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous 
concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) 
to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these imfledged 
practitioners ; or whether Nature, sensible that she had 
mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw 
victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for 
a sweet lenitive — but so it is, that no possible taste or 
odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can 
convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. 
Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads 
over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, 
seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals — 
cats — when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. 
There is something more in these sympathies than philo- 
sophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, 
that his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to 
thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest what are called 
good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact — he hath 
a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and 
under open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to 
humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when 
(as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his mid- 
night cups, and the hard-handed artizan leaving his bed 
to resume the premature laboiu-s of the day, jostle, not 
unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, 
for the honoiu's of the pavement. It is the time when, 
in summer, between the expired and the not yet relu- 
mined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis 
give forth their least satisfactory odours. The rake, who 
wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapours in more grate- 
ful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he passeth ; but 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 151 

the artizan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant 
breakfast. 

This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — 
the delight of the early gardener, who transports his 
smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to 
Covent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and oh ! I 
fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him 
shonldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pen- 
dent over the grateful steam, regale him with a smnptuous 
basin (it will cost thee but three-halfiDennies) and a slice of 
delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) — so may 
thy cidiuary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from 
thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume 
to the welkin — so may the descending soot never taint 
thy costly well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, 
quick-reaching from street to street, of the fired chimney, 
invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to 
disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ; 
the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred 
triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed 
stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocu- 
larity of a young sweep with something more than 
forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, pacing along 
Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when I 
walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my 
back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame 
enough — yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if 
nothing had happened — when the roguish grin of one of 
these young wits encountered me. There he stood, 
pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and 
to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, 
till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he 
thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of his 
poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and 
soot -inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a 

joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth but 

Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss him f) 



152 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

in the March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman — there 
he stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if 
the jest was to last for ever — with such a maximum of 
glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth — for the 
grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it— 
that I could have been content, if the honour of a gentle- 
man might endure it, to have remained his butt and his 
mockery till midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what 
are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips 
(the ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably hold- 
ing such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take leave 
to " air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or 
fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. 
Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep 
a display (even to ostentation) of those white and shiny 
ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in 
manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as 
when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a 
badge of better days; a hint of nobility: — and, doubtless, 
under the obscuring darkness and double night of their 
forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and 
gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed 
pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these 
tender victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, 
to clandestine and almost infantile abductions ; the seeds 
of civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these 
young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly 
hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels 
mourning for their children, even in our days, countenance 
the fact ; the tales of fairy spiriting may shadow a 
lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu 
be but a solitary instance of good fortune out of many 
irreparable and hopeless defiliations. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 153 

since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards 
is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, 
in which the late duke was especially a connoisseur) — 
encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry 
coronets inwoven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter 
and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius — 
was discovered by chance, after all methods of search had 
failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. 
The little creature, having somehow confounded his pass- 
age among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by 
some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magni- 
ficent chamber ; and, tired with his tedious explorations, 
was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, 
which he there saw exhibited ; so creeping between the 
sheets very quietly, laid his black head vipon the pillow, 
and slept like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the 
Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confir- 
mation of what I had just hinted at in this story. A 
high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. 
Is it probable that a poor child of that description, with 
whatever weariness he might be visited, would have 
Yentui-ed, under such a penalty as he would be taught to. 
expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and 
deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the 
rug, or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far 
above his pretensions — is this probable, I would ask, if 
the great power of nature, which I contend for, had not 
been manifested within him, prompting to the adventure 1 
Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind mis- 
gives me that he must be) was allured by some memory, 
not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in 
infancy, when he Avas used to be lapped by his mother, 
or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into 
which he was now but creeping back as into his proper 
incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other theory than 
by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call 
it), can I explain a deed so ventiuous, and, indeed, upon 



154 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

any other system, so indecorous, in this tender, but 
unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with 
a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking 
place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortime 
in these poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast 
of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to 
officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper 
held in Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of 
St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before to 
the master-sweeps in and about the metropolis, confining 
the invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an 
elderly stripling would get in among us, and be good- 
naturedly winked at ; but our main body were infantry. 
One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon his 
dusky suit, had intruded himself into our party, but by 
tokens was providentially discovered in time to be no 
chimney-sweeper, (all is not soot which looks so,) was 
quoited out of the presence with universal indignation, as 
not having on the wedding garment ; biit in general the 
greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a 
convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of the 
fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agree- 
able hubbub of that vanity, but remote enough not to be 
obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in 
it. The guests assembled about seven. • In those little 
temporary parlours three tables were spread with napery, 
not so fine as substantial, and at every board a comely 
hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The 
nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savoiu-. 
James White, as head waiter, had charge of the first 
table ; and myself, with our trusty companion Bigod, 
ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was 
clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should 
get at the first table, for Eochester in his maddest days 
could not have done the humours of the scene with more 
spirit than my friend. After some general expression of 
thanks for the honour the company had done him, his 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 155 

inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old 
dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying 
and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing " the gentleman," 
and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat 
the universal host would set up a shout that tore the 
concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the 
night with their brightness. it was a pleasure to see 
the sg^ble younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his 
more unctuoiis sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to 
the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the 
seniors — how he would intercept a morsel even in the 
jaws of some young desperado, declaring it " must to the 
pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a gentle- 
man's eating" — how he would recommend this slice of 
white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender 
juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking 
their teeth, which were their best patrimony, — how 
genteelly he would deal about the small ale, as if it were 
wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were not 
good, he should lose their custom ; with a special recom- 
mendation to wipe the lip before drinking. Then we had 
our toasts — "the King," — "the Cloth," — which, whether 
they understood or not, was equally diverting and flatter- 
ing ; and for a crowning sentiment, which never failed, 
"May the Brush supersede the Laurel!" All these, 
and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than com- 
prehended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon 
tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a "G-entlemen, 
give me leave to propose so and so," which was a pro- 
digious comfort to those young orphans ; every now and. 
then stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be 
squeamish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of 
those reeking sausages, which pleased them mightily, and 
was the savouriest part, you may believe, of the enter- 
tainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers 



156 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

have long ceased. He carried away with him half the 
fun of the world when he died — of my world at least. 
His old clients look for him among the pens ; and, miss- 
ing him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, 
and the glory of Smithfield departed for ever. 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS, 

IN THE METROPOLIS. 

The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation — ^yom* 
only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses — 
is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last 
fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the 
metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and 
crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity, with all their 
baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this 
eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from 
the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting 
Genius of Beggary is " with sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this 
impertinent crusado, or bellum ad exterminationem, pro- 
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked 
from these Beggars. 

They were the oldest and the honourablest form of 
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature ; 
less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant 
to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature, 
or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs 
were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged 
in the assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very depth of 
their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer 
to the being a man, than to go in livery. 

The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 157 

and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do 
we feel anything towards him but contempt? Could 
Vandyke have made a pictui'e of him, swaying a ferula 
for a sceptre, which would have affected our minds with 
the same heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, 
with which we regard his Belisarius begging for an oholus ? 
Woidd the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic 1 

The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of pretty 
Bessf — whose story doggrel rhymes and ale-house signs 
cannot so degrade or attenuate but that some sparks of a 
lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements — this 
noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable 
sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his 
liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering green 
of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter 
by his side, illumining his rags and his beggary — would 
the child and parent have cut a better figure doing the 
honom'S of a coimter, or expiating their fallen condition upon 
the three-foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board ? 

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode 
to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear 
Margaret Newcastle would call them), when they would 
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, 
never stop till they have brought down their hero in good 
earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent 
illustrates the height he falls from. There is no medium 
which can be presented to the imagination without offeace. 
There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown ffom his 
palace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer 
"mere nature;" and Oresseid, fallen from a prince's love, 
must extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness 
than of beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell and 
clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with a con- 
verse policy, when they woidd express scorn of greatness 
without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades 
cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen. 

How would it soimd in song, that a great monarch had 



158 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker ! yet 
do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read 
the " true ballad," where King Oophetua woos the beggar 
maid? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, 
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one j^roperly con- 
temns a Beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and 
each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbour grice." 
Its poor rents and comings-in are soon summed up and 
told. Its pretences to property are almost ludicrous. 
Its pitifid attempts to save excite a smile. Every 
scornfid companion can weigh his trifle -bigger pm'se 
against it. Poor man reproaches poor man in the streets 
with impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a 
shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. 
No rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of 
weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of 
comparison. He is not under the measure of property. 
He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a 
sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his 
means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him 
with mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, 
or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy neighboiu- 
seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues 
him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the 
independent gentleman that I am, rather than I woidd 
be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor rela- 
tion, I woidd choose, out of the delicacy and true great- 
ness of my mind, to be a Beggar. 

Eags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the 
Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, 
his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected 
to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, 
or limiDeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to 
put on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing 
none. His costume hath undergone less change than the 
Quaker's. He is the only man in the imiverse who is not 
obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 159 

world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in 
one stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. 
The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity 
touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. 
He is not expected to become bail or surety for any one. 
No man troubleth him with questioning his religion or 
politics. He is the only free man in the imiverse. 

The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her 
sights' her lions. I can no more spare them than I coidd 
the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete 
without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad 
Singer ; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as 
the signs of old London. They were the standing morals, 
emblems, mementoes, dial-mottoes, the spital sermons, the 
books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the 
high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry — 

Look 



Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the 
wall of Lincoln's-inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness 
had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch 
a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithfid 
Dog Guide at their feet, — whither are they fled ? or into 
what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, 
out of the wholesome air and sun -warmth 1 immersed 
between four walls, in what withering poor-house do they 
endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink 
of the dropt halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn 
bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and 
hope-stirring tread of the passenger 1 Where hang their 
useless staves ? and who will farm their dogs 1 — Have the 
overseers of St. L — caused them to be shot 1 or were 
they tied vip in sacks and dropt into the Thames, at the 

suggestion of B — the mild rector of ? 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bom-ne, — 
most classical, and, at the same time, most English of 
the Latinists ! — who has treated of this human and 



160 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the 
sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphmm in Canem, or, 
Dog^s Epitaph. Keader, peruse it ; and say, if customary 
sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, 
were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral 
sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares 
of a vast and busy metropolis. 

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque seuects, 
Dux cseco ficlus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 
Praetenso hinc atqtie liinc baculo, per iniqiia locorum 
lucertam explorare viam; seel fila secutus, 
Qufe dubios regerent pass'&s, vestigia tuta 
Fixit iuoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 
In nudo nactus saxo, qu§, prastereuntium 
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
Quels corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 
Ad latus iuterea jacui sopitus lierile, 
Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 
Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice 
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
TaBdia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
Hi mores, hasc vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta 
Quffi taudem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum 
Orbavit domimim ; prisci sed gratia facti 
Ne tota iutereat, longos deleta per annos, 
Exiguum liunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
Etsi inopis, non ingratss, munuscula dextrse ; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque, 
Quod memoret, fidumque Canem dominumque Benignnm. 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps. 

His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted. 

Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant, 

Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 

A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

Of passers-by in thickest confluence flovv'd : 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 161 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 
Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 
I meantime at his feet obseqiiious slept ; 
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 
Prick' d up at his least motion ; to receive 
At his kind hand my customaiy crumbs, 
And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent 
• With our long day and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life 
Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
And sever'd from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
Tlirough tract of years in mute oblivion lost. 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand. 
And mth short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months 
past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, 
who used to glide his comely upper half over the pave- 
ments of London, wheeling along with most ingenious 
celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle to natives, 
to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, 
with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare 
to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, 
a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. 
The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down 
to his own level. The common cripple would despise his 
own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty 
heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have 
noticed him; for the accident which brought him low 
took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a 
groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antteus, 
and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neigh- 
boured. He was a grand fragment ; as good as an Elgin 
marble. The nature, which should have recruited his 
reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into 
M 



162 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a 
tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an 
earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this man- 
drake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous 
appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to 
have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as 
the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse -half had 
been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He 
moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of 
the body- portion which was left him. The os sublime 
was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly counte- 
nance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven 
this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in 
the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because 
he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for 
the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contu- 
macy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of 
Correction. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nui- 
sance, which called for legal interference to remove 1 or 
not rather a salutary and a touching object to the passersr 
by in a great city 1 Among her shows, her museums, and 
supplies for ever-gaping ciu-iosity (and what else but an 
accumulation of sights — endless sights — is a great city ; 
or for what else is it desirable f) was there not room for 
one Lusus (not Naturce, indeed, but) Accidentium ? 
What if in forty-and-two-years' going about, the man had 
scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as 
the rumour ran) of a few hundreds — whom had he injiu^ed ? 
— whom had he imposed upon'? The contributors had 
enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being 
exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of 
heaven — shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate 
and painful motion — he was enabled to retire at night to 
enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripi^les over a dish 
of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely 
brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a 
House of Commons' Committee — rwas this, or was his 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 163 

tnily paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a 
statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, at 
least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he 
has been slandered with — a reason that he should be de- 
prived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying way of life, 
and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond 1 — 

There was a Yorick once, whom it woidd not have 
shauied to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to 
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, 
for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost thy 
breed." — 

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made 
by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One 
was much talked of in the public papers some time since, 
and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in 
the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five- 
hundred-pound legacy left him by a person whose name 
he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning 
walks from Peckliam (or some village thereabouts) where 
he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last 
twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of 
some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way- 
side in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised his 
daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, when he died, 
left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a 
century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank 
friend. Was this a story to piu'se up people's hearts, and 
pennies, against giving an alms to the blind? — or not 
rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the 
one part, and noble gratitude upon the other 1 

I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, 
blinking and looking up with his no eyes in the sun — 

Is it possible I could have steeled my piu-se against 
him? 

Perhaps I had no small change. 

Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words impo- 
sition, imposture — give, and ash no questions. Cast thy 



164 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this 
Bank clerk) entertained angels. 

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis- 
tress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature 
(outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not 
stay to inquire whether the " seven small children," in 
whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable 
existence. Eake not into the bowels of imwelcome truth 
to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he 
be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate 
father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast 
relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with 
their counterfeit looks and mumping tones, think them 
players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign 
these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou 
canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend 
M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for 
the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, claw- 
ing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in 
Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted 
at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his 
Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden 
age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. 
The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, 
or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) 
was accidentally discovered in the manner following. 
The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods 
one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his 
hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, 
a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, 
as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 165 

escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, 
spread the conflagration over every part of their poor 
mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the 
cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you 
may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine 
litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, 
perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxmy all 
ovg: the East, from the remotest periods that we read of 
Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, 
not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his 
father and he could easily build up again with a few dry 
branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, 
as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what 
he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over 
the smoking remnants of one of those mitimely sufierers, 
an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he 
had before experienced. What could it proceed from 1 — 
not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell 
before — ^indeed, this was by no means the first accident of 
the kind which had occurred through the negligence of 
this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble 
that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory 
moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. 
He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to 
feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He 
burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his 
booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the 
scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the 
first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before 
him no man had known it) he tasted— cracHmc/ / Again 
he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so 
much npw, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. 
The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, 
that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted 
so delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new- 
born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the 
scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming 
it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire 



166 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory 
cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows 
upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, 
which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been 
flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his 
lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any in- 
conveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His 
father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his 
pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming 
a little more sensible of his situation, something like the 
following dialogue ensued. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there de- 
vouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down 
three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to 
you ! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what 
— what have you got there, I say V 

" father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how 
nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his 
son, and he cursed himself that ever he shoidd beget a 
son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it 
asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists 
of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, 
father, only taste — Lord !" — with such-like barbarous 
ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abom- 
inable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son 
to death for an imnatviral young monster, when the crack- 
ling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and 
applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted 
some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he 
would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing 
to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little 
tedious), both father and son fairly set down to the mess, 
and never left off till they had despatched all that re- 
mained of the litter. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 167 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbotu's woukl certainly have stoned them for 
a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of im- 
proving upon the good meat which God had sent them. 
Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed 
that Ho-ti's cottage was bm'nt down now more frequently 
than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
Some would break out in broad day, others in the night- 
tinffe. As often as the sow farrowed, so siu-e was the house 
of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was 
the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed 
to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they 
were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father 
and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an 
inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the ob- 
noxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about 
to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged 
that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood 
accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, 
and they all handled it ; and burning their fingers, as 
Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature 
prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the 
face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge 
had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole court, towns- 
folk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without leav- 
ing the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they 
brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 
manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the court 
was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs 
that could be had for love or money. In a few days his 
lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. The 
thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen 
but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
mously dear all over the district. The insurance-ofiices 
one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and 
slighter every day, until it was feared that the very 
science of architecture would in no long time be lost to 



168 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the "world. Thus this custom of firing houses coutinued, 
till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, 
like oui" Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of 
swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
(bicrnt, as they called it) without the necessity of con- 
suming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the 
rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit 
came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 
most useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make 
their way among mankind 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext 
for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire 
(especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of 
any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be 
found in eoast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edihilis, 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — 2^i''^'^^P^ 
ohsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and 
tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of 
the sty — Avlth no original speck of the amor hmmmditice, 
the hereditary failing of the fii'st parent, yet manifest — 
his voice as yet not broken, but something between a 
childish treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner or 
prceludmm of a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that oiu' 
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavoiu- comparable, I will contend, to 
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, 
crachlhig, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited 
to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in over- 
coming the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive 
oleaginous — call it not fat ! but an indefinable sweet- 
ness growing up to it^the tender blossoming of fat — fat 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 169 

cropped in tlie bud — taken in the shoot — in the first 
innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's 
yet jDiu'e food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal 
manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so 
blended and nmning into each other, that both together 
make but one ambrosian residt or common substance. 

Behold him while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather 
a Befreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so 
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! 
Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of 
that tender age ! he hath wept out his pretty eyes — 
radiant jellies — shooting stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to 
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany 
matm-er swinehood 1 Ten to one he would have proved 
a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — 
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation — from these 
sins he is happily snatched away- — 

Ere sin could bliglit or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care— 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown cm-seth, while his 
stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver 
bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair seijulchre 
in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — and for 
such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She 
is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, 
yet so like to sinning, that really a tender -conscienced 
person would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal 
taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that apjjroach 
her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure 
bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her 
relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not 
with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might barter 
her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative 



170 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness 
of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on 
him, and the weakling refuse tli not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be 
unravelled without hazard, he is— good throughout. No 
part of him is better or worse than another. He 
helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all aromid. 
He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neigh- 
bours' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart 
a share of the good things of this life which fall to their 
lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest 
I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his 
relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. " Pre- 
sents," I often say, " endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, 
partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame 
villatic fowl "), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, 
I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a 
stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like 
Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon pig. 
Metliinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good 
flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house 
slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not 
what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I 
may 'say, to my individual palate.- — It argues an insen- 
sibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at 
the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or 
some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one 
evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. 
In my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a grey- 
headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this 
time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to 
console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the 
very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I made him 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 171 

a present of — the whole cake ! I walked on a little, 
buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet 
soothing of self-satisfaction ; but, before I had got to the 
end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I 
burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my 
good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger 
that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man 
for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my 
aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and 
not another — would eat her nice cake — and what should 
I say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I 
was to part with her pretty present ! — and the odoiu- of 
that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the 
pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make 
it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how dis- 
appointed she woidd feel that I had never had a bit of it 
in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent 
spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of good- 
ness ; and above all I wished never to see the face 
again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey im- 
postor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death 
with something of a shock, as we hear of any other 
obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it 
would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light 
merely) what effect this process might have towards 
intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild 
and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like 
refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we 
condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of 
the practice. It might impart a gusto. — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, 
supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his 
death by whipping i^per fiagellatiomm extremam) super- 
added a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense 



172 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

than any possible suffering we can conceive in the 
animal, is man justiiied in using that method of putting 
the animal to death ? " I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a 
dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I 
beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your 
whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff 
them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic ; 
you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than 
they are — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 



A BAOHELOE'S COMPLAINT OF 
THE BEHAVIOUR OP MARRIED PEOPLE. 

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in 
noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console 
myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I 
have lost by remaining as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives 
ever made any great impression upon me, or had much 
tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions 
which I took up long ago upon more substantial con- 
siderations. What oftenest offends me at the houses 
of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a 
different description ; — ^it is that they are too loving. 

Not too loving neither : that does not explain my 
meaning. Besides, why should that offend me ? The 
very act of separating themselves from the rest of the 
world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's 
society, implies that they prefer one another to all the 
world. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this pre- 
ference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of 
us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their 



/ 



A bachelor's complaint of married people. 173 

company a moment without being made to feel, by some 
indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not the object 
of this preference. Now there are some things which 
give no offence, while implied or taken for granted 
merely; but expressed, there is much offence in them. If 
a man were to accost the first homely-featured or plain- 
dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her 
bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enougli for 
him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to 
be kicked for Iiis ill-manners ; yet no less is implied in 
the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting 
the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. 
The yoimg woman understands this as clearly as if it were 
put into words ; but no reasonable young woman would 
think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as 
little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, 
and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that 
I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice. It is 
enough that I know I am not : I do not want this per- 
petual reminding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be 
made sufficiently mortifying, but these admit of a pallia- 
tive. The knowledge which is brought out to insidt me, 
may accidentally improve me ; and in the rich man's 
houses and pictures, — his parks and gardens, I have a 
temporary usufruct at least. But the display of married 
happiness has none of these palliatives : it is throughout 
piu-e, unrecompensed, unqualified insidt. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of 
the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most 
possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their ad- 
vantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less 
favom'ed neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the 
less be disposed to question the right. But these married 
monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their 
patent into our faces. 

Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire com- 
placency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances 



174 THE ESSAYS OP ELI A, 

of a new-married couple, — -in that of the lady particu- 
larly : it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this 
world : that yoih can have no hopes of her. It is true, I 
have none : nor wishes either, perhaps : but this is one of 
those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken 
for granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give themselves, 
foui^ded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would 
be more offensive . if they were less irrational. We will 
allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to their 
own craft better than we, who have not had the happiness 
to be made free of the company : but their arrogance is 
not content within these limits. If a single person pre- 
sume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon 
the most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as 
an incompetent person. Nay, a yoimg married lady of 
my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had not 
changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a 
question on which I had the misfortune to differ from 
her, respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters for 
the London market, had the assurance to ask with a 
sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I could pretend to 
know anything about such matters ! 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the 
airs which these creatures give themselves when they 
come, as they generally do, to have children. When I 
consider how little of a rarity children are, — that every 
street and blind alley swarms with them, — that the 
poorest people commonly have them in most abundance, 
— that there are few marriages that are not blest with at 
least one of these bargains, — how often they tiu:n out ill, 
and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to 
vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the 
gallows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell what cause for 
pride there can possibly be in having them. If they 
were young phcsnixes, indeed, that were born but one in 
a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so 
common 



A bachelor's complaint of married people. 175 

I do not advert to the insolent merit -which they 
assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let 
them look to that. But why ive, who are not their 
natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our 
spices, myrrh, and incense, — om tribute and homage of 
admiration, — I do not see. 

" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so 
are the young children;" so says the excellent office^ in 
our Prayer-book appointed for the chui _ing of women. 
" Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them." 
So say I ; but then don't let him discharge his quiver 
upon us that are weaponless ; — let them be arrows, but 
not to gall and stick us. I have generallj- observed that 
these arrows are double-headed : they have two forks, to 
be sure to hit with one or the otlier. As for instance, 
where you come into a house which is full of children, if 
you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking 
of something else, perhaps, and tiu-n a deaf ear to tlieir 
innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, 
morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you 
find them more than usually engaging, — if you are taken 
with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to 
romp and play with them, — some pretext or other is sure 
to be found for sending tliem out of tlie room ; they are 

too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like children. 

With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to hit 
you. 

I could forgive their jealoiisy, and dispense with toying 
with their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I think 
it imreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I 
see no occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps eight, 
nine, or ten, indiscriminately, — to love all the pretty 
dears, because children are so engaging ! 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my dog : " 
that is not always so very practicable, particidarly if the 
dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. 
But a dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate substance, as 
a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where 



176 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

we last parted when my friend went away upon a long 
absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, 
and anything that reminds me of him ; provided it be in 
its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue 
fancy can give it. But children have a real character, 
and an essential being of themselves ; they are amiable 
or unamiable per se ; I must love or hate them as I see 
cause for either in their qualities. A child's natiure is too 
serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere 
appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated 
accordingly ; they stand with me upon their own stock, 
as much as men and women do. Oh ! but you wiU say, 
sm-e it is an attractive age, — there is something in the 
tender years of infancy that of itself charms us 1 That is 
the very reason why I am more nice about them. I 
know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, 
-not even excepting the delicate creatm-es which bear them; 
but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable 
it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy 
differs not much from another in glory; but a violet 
should look and smell the daintiest. — I was always rather 
squeamish in my women and children. 

But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into 
their familiarity at least, before they can complain of 
inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of inter- 
coiurse. But if the husband be a man with whom you 
have lived on a friendly footing before marriage — if you 
did not come in on the wife's side — if you did not sneak 
into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast 
habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as 
thought on, — look about you — yom- teniu-e is precarious 
— before a twelvemonth shall roll over yoiu: head, you 
shall find yom' old friend gradually grow cool and altered 
towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking 
with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaint- 
ance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship 
did not commence after the 2^^'t'iod of his marriage. 
With some limitations, they can endure that ; but that 



A bachelor's complaint of married people. ni 

tlie good mau should have dared to enter into a solemn 
league of friendship in which they were not consulted, 
though it happened before they knew him, — before they 
that are now man and wife ever met, — this is intolerable 
to them. Every long friendship, every old authentic 
intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new 
stamped with their cm-rency, as a sovereign prince calls 
in the good old money that was coined in some reign 
before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and 
minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let 
it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck 
generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in 
these netv 7)iintings. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult 
and worm you out of thek husband's confidence. Laugh- 
ing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were 
a queer kind of fellow that said good things, hiit an oddity, 
is one of the ways ; — they have a particular kind of stare 
for the pm'pose ; — till at last the husband, who used to 
defer to your judgment, and would pass over some ex- 
crescences of understanding and manner- for the sake of a 
general vein of observation (not quite vidgar) which he 
perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are not 
altogether a humorist, — a fellow well enough to have 
consorted with in his bachelor days, but not quite so 
proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called 
the staring way ; and is that which has oftenest been put 
in practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of 
irony ; that is, where they find you an object of especial 
regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be 
shaken from the lasting attachment foimded on esteem 
which he has conceived towards you, by never qualified 
exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the 
good man, who understands well enough that it is all 
done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of 
gratitude which is due to so much candom-, and by relaxing 
a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two in his 

N 



178 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly level of moderate 
esteem — that " decent affection and complacent kindness " 
towards you, where she herself can join in sympathy with 
him without much stretch and violence to her sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so 
desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent 
simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first 
made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for some- 
thing excellent in yom- moral character was that which 
riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any ima- 
ginary discovery of a want of poignancy in yom- conversa- 
tion, she will cry, " I thought, my dear, you described 

your friend, Mr. , as a great wit V If, on the 

other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your con- 
versation that he first grew to like you, and was content 
for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in yom- 
moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these 
she as readily exclaims, " This, my dear, is yom* good 

Mr. !" One good lady whom I took the liberty 

of expostulating with for not showing me quite so much 
respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had 
the candour to confess to me that she had often heard 

Mr. speak of me before marriage, and that she 

had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, 
but that the sight of me had very much disapi^ointed her 
expectations ; for, from her husband's representations of 
me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, 
tall, ofiicer-like looking man (I use her very words), the 
very reverse of which proved to be the tnxth.. This was 
candid ; and I had the civility not to ask her in retm-n, 
how she came to pitch ui^on a standard of personal accom- 
plishments for her husband's friends which differed so 
much from his own ; for my friend's dimensions as near 
as possible approximate to mine ; he standing five feet 
five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him 
by about half an inch ; and he no more than myself ex- 
hibiting any indications of a martial character in his air 
or countenance. 



A bachelor's complaint of married people. 179 

These are some of the mortifications which I have 
encountered in the absm'd attempt to visit at their houses. 
To enumerate them all woiild be a vain endeavoiu'; I 
shall therefore just glance at the very common impro- 
priety of which married ladies are guilty, — of treating us 
as if we were their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, 
when they use us with familiarity, and thek husbands 
wiUi ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the 
other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of 

supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did 

not come home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather 
than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching 
one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good 
manners : for ceremony is an invention to take off the 
imeasy feeling which we derive from knowing om'selves 
to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow- 
creature than some other person is. It endeavom's to 
make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that 
invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the 
greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, 
and withstood her husband's importimities to go to 
supper, she would have acted according to the strict 
rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are 
bound to observe to theu- husbands, beyond the point of 
a modest behaviour and decorum : therefore I must pro- 
test against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her 
own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was 
applying to with great good-will, to her husband at the 
other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less 
extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their 
stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of 

But I am weary of stringing vcp all my married 
acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend 
and change their manners, or I promise to record the 
full-length English of their names, to the terror of all 
such desperate offenders in future. 



180 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I i3icked up 
the other day — I know not by what chance it was pre- 
served so long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the 
Players, who make the principal figure in it. It presents 
the cast of parts in the Twelfth-Night, at the old Drury- 
lane Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. There is something 
very touching in these old remembrances. They make us 
think how we once used to read a Play Bill — not, as now 
peradventure, singling out a favomite perfoiiner, and cast- 
ing a negligent eye over the rest ; but spelling out every 
name, down to the very mutes and servants of the scene ; 
when it was a matter of no small moment to us whether 
Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian ; when 
Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small 
account — had an imj^ortance, beyond what we can be con- 
tent to attribute now to the time's best actors. — " Orsino, 
by Mr' Barrymore." — What a full Shakspearian soimd it 
carries ! how fresh to memory arise the image and the 
manner of the gentle actor ! Those who have only seen 
Mrs. Jordan within the last ten or fifteen years, can have 
no adequate notion of her performance of such parts as 
Ophelia; Helena, in All's Well that Ends Well; and 
Viola, in this play. Her voice had latterly acquired a 
coarseness, which suited well enough with her Nells and 
Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her steady, 
melting eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts — in which 
her memory now chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone 
by her plaintive ones. There is no giving an account how 
she delivered the disguised story of her love for Orsino. 
It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave 
it into an harmonious period, line necessarily following 
line, to make up the music — yet I have heard it so spoken, 
or rather read, not without its grace and beauty — but. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 181 

when she had declared her sister's history to be a " blank," 
and that she " never told her love," there was a pause, as 
if the story had ended — and then the image of the " worm 
in the bud" came up as a new suggestion— and the 
heightened image of " Patience " still followed after that 
as by some growing (and not mechanical) process, thought 
springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they 
wQse watered by her tears. So in those fine lines — 

Write loyal cantons of contemned love — 
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills — 

there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for 
that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her 
passion ; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate 
then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law. 

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of 
her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was par- 
ticularly excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation 
with the Clown. I have seen some Olivias — and those 
very sensible actresses too — who in these interlocutions 
have seemed to set their wits at the jester, and to vie 
conceits with him in downright emulation. But she used 
him for her sport, like what he was, to trifle a leisiu-e 
sentence or two with, and then to be dismissed, and she 
to be the Great Lady still. She touched the imperious 
fantastic humom* of the character with nicety. Her fine 
spacious person filled the scene. 

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so 
often misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor, 
who then played it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall 
hope for pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these 
points. 

Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a melan- 
choly phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of 
the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic 
conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the present- 
ment of a great idea to the fancy. He had the true 
poetical enthusiasm — the rarest faculty among players. 



182 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

None that I remember possessed even a portion of that 
fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's famous 
rant about glory, or the transports of the Venetian in- 
cendiary at the vision of the fired city. His voice had 
the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect, of the 
trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way 
embarrassed by affectation ; and the thorough-bred gentle- 
man was uppermost in every movement. He seized the 
moment of passion with greatest truth ; like a faithful 
clock, never striking before the time ; never anticipating 
or leading you to anticipate. He was totally destitute of 
trick and artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do 
the poet's message simply, and lie did it with as genuine 
fidelity as tlie nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of the 
gods. He let the passion or the sentiment do its own 
work witliout prop or bolstering. He would have scorned 
to mountebank it ; and betrayed none of that cleverness 
which is the bane of serious acting. For tliis reason, his 
lago was the only endurable one which I remember to 
have seen. No spectator, from his action, could divine 
more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. 
His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of 
the mystery. There were no by-intimations to make the 
audience fancy theu' own discernment so much greater 
than that of the Moor — who commonly stands like a great 
helpless mark, set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of 
barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The lago of 
Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was a trium- 
phant tone about tlie character, natural to a general con- 
sciousness of power ; but none of that petty vanity which 
cliuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little success- 
ful stroke of its knavery— as is common with your small 
villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not 
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting 
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other 
children, who are miglatily pleased at being let into tlie 
secret ; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble 
natiure into toils against which no discernment was avail- 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS, 183 

able, where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose 
seemed dark, and without motive. The part of Malvolio, 
in the Twelfth Night, was performed by Bensley with a 
richness and a dignity, of which (to judge from some re- 
cent castings of that character) the very tradition must be 
worn out from the stage. No manager in those days would 
have dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddely, or Mr. Parsons ; 
when Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, 
John Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the 
part. Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes 
comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling ; but 
dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an 
over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of 
Puritan ; and he might have worn his gold chain with 
honour in one of our old roundhead families, in the service 
of a Lambert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and 
his manners are misjDlaced in lUyria. He is opposed to 
the proper levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal 
contest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call it which you 
will), is inherent, and native to the man, not mock or 
affected, which latter only are the fit objects to excite 
laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, but 
neither buff'oon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, 
a little above his station, but probably not much above 
his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have 
been brave, honoiu:able, accomplished. His careless com- 
mittal of the ring to the ground (which he was com- 
missioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of 
birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of 
a gentleman and a man of education. We must not con- 
found him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. 
He is master of the household to a great princess ; a 
dignity probably conferred upon him for other respects 
than age or length of service. Olivia, at the first indica- 
tion of his supposed madness, declares that she " would 
not have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this 
look as if the character was meant to appear little or in- 
significant 1 Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face — 



184 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of what? — of being "sick of self-love,"^ — -but with a 
gentleness and considerateness, which could not have been, 
if she had not thought that this particular infirmity 
shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight and his 
sottish revellers, is sensible and spirited ; and when we 
take into consideration the unprotected condition of his 
mistress, and the strict regard with which her state of 
real or dissembled mourning woidd draw the eyes of the 
world upon her house-affairs, Malvolio might feel the 
honour of the family in some sort in his keeping ; as it 
appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or kins- 
men, to look to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such 
nice respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was 
meant to be represented as possessing estimable quahties, 
the expression of the Duke, in his anxiety to have him 
reconciled, almost infers : " Piursue him, and entreat him 
to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and dark- 
ness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He 
argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and 
philosophizes gallantly upon his straw. ^ There must have 
been some shadow of worth about the man ; he must have 
been something more than a mere vapour — a thing of 
straw, or Jack in office— before Fabian and Maria could 
have ventured sending him upon a courting -errand to 
Olivia. There was some consonancy (as he would say) in 
the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold 
even for that house of misrule. 

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of 
Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an 
old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but 
his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense 
of worth. There was something in it beyond the cox- 

^ Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild 
fowl ? 
Mai. That the soul of our grandam miglit haply inhabit a bird. 
Cloimi. What thinlvest thou of his ojiinion ? 
Med. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his 
opinion. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 185 

comb. It was big aud swelling, but you could not be 
sm"e that it was hollow. You might wish to see it taken 
down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. He 
was magnificent from the outset ; but when the decent 
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the 
poison of self-love, in his conceit of the Coimtess's affec- 
tion, gradually to work, you would have thought that the 
hera of La Mancha in person stood before you. How he 
went smiling to himself ! with what ineffable carelessness 
would he twirl his gold chain ! what a dream it was ! you 
were infected with the ilhision, and did not wish that it 
should be removed ! you had no room for laughter ! if an 
imseasonable reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was 
a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, 
that can lay him open to such frenzies — but, in truth, 
you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted 
— -you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an 
age with the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but 
for a day in the conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia 1 
Why, the Duke would have given his principality but for 
a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have been 
so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air, to taste 
manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate 
Hyperion. ! shake not the castles of his pride — endure 
yet for a season, bright moments of confidence — " stand 
still, ye watches of the element," that Malvolio may be 
still in fancy fair Olivia's lord ! — but fate and retribution 
say no — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria — the witty 
taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insupportable triumph 
of the foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is un- 
masked — and "thus the whirligig of time," as the tnie 
clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that 
I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while 
Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic .interest. 
There was good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. 
What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him ! Love- 
grove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived the 
character some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently 



186 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

grotesque ; but Docld was it, as it came out of nature's 
hands. It might be said to remain in i^uris naUoralihus. 
In expressing slowness of apprehension, this actor sur- 
passed all others. You could see the first dawn of an 
idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up by 
little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared up 
at last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its highest 
meridian. He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some 
have had the power to retard their pulsation. The 
balloon takes less time in filling than it took to cover the 
expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters 
with expression. A glimmer of miderstanding would 
appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go 
out again. A part of his forehead would catch a little 
intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to 
the remainder. 

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than 
five-and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of 
Gray's Inn — they were then far finer than they are now — 
the accursed Veridam Buildings had not encroached upon 
all the east side of them, cutting out delicate green 
crankles, and shouldering away one or two of the stately 
alcoves of the terrace — the siu-vivor stands gaping and 
relationless as if it remembered its brother — they are still 
the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved 
Temple not forgotten — have the gravest character ; their 
aspect being altogether reverend and law-breathing — ■ 
Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their gravel 

walks taking my afternoon solace on a summer day 

upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came 
towards me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, I 
judged to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He 
had a serious, thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in 
meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe 
of old Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of sub- 
indicative token of respect which one is apt to demon- 
strate towards a venerable stranger, and which rather 
denotes an inclination to greet him, than any positive 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 187 

motion of the body to that effect — a species of humility 
and will-worship which I observe, nine times out of ten, 
rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered to — 
when the face turning full upon me strangely identified 
itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not 
mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be 
the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often 
under circiunstances of gaiety ; which I had never seen 
without a smile, or recognised but as the usher of mirth ; 
tlaat looked out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily 
pert in Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite ; so blankly 
divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, 
in Acres, in Fribble, and a thoiisand agreeable imper- 
tinences ? Was this the face — full of thought and care- 
fulness — -that had so often divested itself at will of every 
trace of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy 
face for two or three hours at least of its furrows ! Was 
this the face — manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so 
often despised, made mocks at, made merry with ! The 
remembrance of the freedoms which I had taken with it 
came upon me with a reproach of insult. I could have 
asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon me with a 
sense of injury. There is something strange as well as 
sad in seeing actors — yom* pleasant fellows particularly- 
subjected to and suffering the common lot ; — their for- 
tunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to the 
scene, their actions to be amenable to poetic justice only. 
We can hardly connect them with more awful responsi- 
bilities. The death of this fine actor took place shortly 
after this meeting. He had quitted the stage some 
months ; and, as I learned afterwards, had been in the 
habit of resorting daily to these gardens, almost to the 
day of his decease. In these serious walks, probably, he 
was divesting himself of many scenic and some real 
vanities — weaning himself from the frivolities of the lesser 
and the greater theatre — doing gentle penance for a life 
of no very reprehensible fooleries — taking off by degrees 
the buffoon mask which he might feel he had worn too 



188 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

long — and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part. 
Dying, he " put on the weeds of Dominic." ^ 

If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not 
easily forget the pleasant creatiire, who in those days 
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — 
Eichard, or rather Dicky Suett — for so in his life-time he 
delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the appella- 
tion — lieth buried on the north side of the cemetery of 
Holy Paid, to whose service his nonage and tender years 
were dedicated. There are who do yet remember him at 
that period — his pipe clear and harmonious. He would 
often speak of his chorister days, when he was " cherub 
Dicky." 

What clipped his "wdngs, or made it expedient that he 
sliould exchange the holy for the profane state ; whether 
he had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to 
that office), like Sir John, " with hallooing and singing 
of anthems;" or whether he was adjudged to lack some- 
thing, even in those early years, of the gravity indispens- 
able to an occu23ation which professeth to " commerce 
with the skies," — I could never rightly learn ; but we find 
him, after the probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting 
to a secular condition and become one of us. 

I think he was not altogether of that timber out of 
which cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. 
But if a glad heart — kind, and therefore glad — be any 
part of sanctity, then might the robe of Motley, with 
which he invested himself with so much humility after 
his deprivation, and which he wore so long with so much 

■^ Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice col- 
lection of old Englisli literature. I should judge him to have been 
a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length 
of study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had 
seen him one evening in Agiiecheek, and recognising Dodd the next 
day in Fleet Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and 
salute him as the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a 
"Save yon, Sir Andreiv." Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this 
unusual address from a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking 
wave of the hand, put him off with an "Away, Fool." 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 189 

blameless satisfaction to himself and to the public, be 
accepted for a siu'plice — his white stole, and albe. 

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement 
upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he com- 
menced, as I have been told, with adopting tlie manner 
of Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in 
which most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator 
thajj he was in any true sense himself imitable. 

He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. He came 
in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, him- 
self no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, 
like Puck, by his note — Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! — sometimes 
deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with an irresistible accession, 
derived, perhaps, remotely from his ecclesiastical educa- 
tion, foreign to his prototype of — La I Thousands of 
hearts yet respond to the chuckling La / of Dicky 
Suett, brought back to their remembrance by the faithful 
transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The "force 
of nature could no further go." He drolled upon the 
stock of these two syllables richer than the cuckoo. 

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his 
composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a 
grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon 
those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter 
part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a 
scruple must have made him tottei", a sigh have puffed 
him down ; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a 
wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, 
scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good- 
fellow, " thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a 
scratched face or a torn doublet. 

Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and 
jesters. They have all the true Siiett stamp, a loose and 
shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready mid- 
wife to a without-pain-delivered jest ; in words, light as 
air, venting truths deep as the centre ; with idlest rhymes 
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the 
tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. 



190 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of 
personal favourites with the town than any actors before 
or after. The difference, I take it, was this : — Jack was 
more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral preten- 
sions. Dicky was more lihed for his sweet, good-natmred, 
no pretensions at all. Yoiu' whole conscience stirred with 
Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the 
Wood — but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare 
says of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He 
IDut us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him — not as 
from Jack, as from an antagonist, — but because it could 
not touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He 
was delivered from the burthen of that death ; and, when 
Death came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it 
is recorded of him by Eobert Palmer, who kindly watched 
his exit, that he received the last stroke, neither varying 
his accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple ex- 
clamation, worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph — 
La/ La ! Bobby ! 

The elder Palmer (of stage-trading celebrity) commonly 
played Sir Toby in those days ; but there is a solidity of 
wit in the jests of that half- Pais taff which he did not 
quite fill out. He was as much too showy as Moody 
(who sometimes took the part) was dry and sottish. In 
sock or buskin there was an air of swaggering gentility 
about Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman with a slight 
infusion of the footman. His brother Bob (of recenter 
memory), who was his shadow in everything while he 
lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards — ■ 
was a gentleman with a little stronger infusion of the 
latter ingredient ; that was all. It is amazing how a 
little of the more or less makes a difference in these things. 
When you saw Bobby in the "Duke's Servant, ^ you said, 
" What a pity such a pretty fellow was only a servant !" 
When you saw Jack figiuing in Captain Absolute, you 
thought you could trace his promotion to some lady of 
quality who fancied the handsome fellow in his topknot, 
^ High Life Below Stairs. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 191 

and had. bought him a commission. Therefore Jack in 
Dick Amlet was insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, and 
insinuating ; but his secondary or siipplemental voice still 
more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was 
reserved for the sjDectator ; and the dramatis j^ersonce were 
supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of 
Youug Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, 
were tlnis marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. 
This secret correspondence with the company before the 
curtain (which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an 
extremely happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the 
more highly artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan 
especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so indis- 
pensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or woidd 
rather interfere to diminish your pleasm-e. The fact is, 
you do not believe in such characters as Surface — the 
villain of artificial comedy — even while you read or see 
them. If you did, they woidd shock and not divert you. 
When Ben, in Love for Love, returns from sea, the fol- 
lowing exquisite dialogue occius at his first meeting with 
his father :— 

Sir Sam^json. Tliou liast been many a weary league, Beu, since 
I saw thee. 

Ben. Ey, ej', been. Been far enough, an that be all. — Well, 
father, and how do all at home ? how does brother Dick and brother 
Val? 

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two 
years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

Ben. Mess, that's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as 
you say — well, and how ? — I have a many questions to ask yoii. 

Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life 
woidd be revolting, or rather in real life could not have 
co-existed with the warm-hearted temperament of the cha- 
racter. But when you read it in the spirit with which 
such playfid selections and specious combinations rather 
than strict meta2)hrases of natiue shoidd be taken, or when 
you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound 



"192 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the moral sense at all. For what is Ben — the pleasant 
sailor which Bannister gives us — but a piece of satire — a 
creation of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combination of 
all the accidents of a sailor's character — his contempt of 
money — his credulity to women — with that necessary 
estrangement from home which it is just within the verge 
of credibility to suppose might produce such an hallucina- 
tion as is here described. We never think the worse of 
Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But 
when an actor comes, and instead of the delightful phan- 
tom — the creatm-e dear to half-belief— which Bannister 
exhibited — displays before om- eyes a downright concretion 
of a Wapping sailor — a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — 
and nothing else — when instead of investing it with a 
delicious confusedness of the head, and a veering undi- 
rected goodness of pm-pose — he gives to it a downright 
daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its 
actions ; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the charac- 
ter with a pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and 
was to be judged by them alone — we feel the discord of 
the thing ; the scene is disturbed ; a real man has got in 
among the dramatis 2:>ersona;, and puts them out. We 
want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place is 
not behind the curtain, but in the first or second gallery. 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE 
LAST CENTUEY. 

The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite 
extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their 
heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put 
down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for 
a few wild speeches, an occasional license of dialogue ? I 
think not altogether. The business of their dramatic 
characters will not stand the moral test. We screw 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 193 

everything up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, 
the passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same 
way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or 
"ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We 
have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. 
We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two 
hours' duration, and of no after consequence, with the 
severe eyes which inspect real vices with their bearings 
upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue 
(not reducible in life to the point of strict morality), and 
take it all for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic 
person, and judge him accordingly. We try him in our 
courts, from which there is no appeal to the dramatis 
personce, his peers. We have been spoiled with — not sen- 
timental comedy — but a tyrant far more pernicious to our 
pleasures which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all- 
devoiu-ing drama of common life ; where the moral i^oint 
is everything ; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed 
personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy), we 
recognise om'selves, our brothers, aimts, kinsfolk, allies, 
patrons, enemies, — the same as in life, — with an interest 
in what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we 
cannot aflPord oiu moral judgment, in its deepest and most 
vital results, to compromise or slumber for a moment. 
What is there transacting, by no modification is made to 
affect us in any other manner than the same events or 
characters would do in our relationships of life. We 
carry our fire-side concerns to the theatre with us. We 
do not go thither like our ancestors, to escape from the 
pressm'e of reality, so much as to confirm our experi- 
ence of it ; to make assurance double, and take a bond of 
fate. We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it 
was the mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice 
to the shades. All that neutral ground of character, 
which stood between vice and virtue ; or which in fact 
was indifi'erent to neither, where neither properly was 
called in question ; that happy breathing-place from the 
burthen of a perpetual moral questioning — the sanctuary 




194 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry — is broken up and 
disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society. 
The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We 
dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We 
bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection 
from the scenic representation of disorder, and fear a 
painted pustule. In our anxiety that our morality should 
not take cold, we wrap it up in a great blanket surtout 
of precaution against the breeze and sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies 
to answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing 
beyond the diocese of the strict conscience, — not to live 
always in the precincts of the law courts, — but now and 
then, for a dream- while or so, to imagine a world with no 
meddling restrictions — to get into recesses, whither the 
hunter cannot follow me — 

■■ — — Secret shades 



Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jove. 

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and 
more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly 
for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I 
do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better 
always for the perusal of oneof Congreve's— nay, whyshoidd 
I not add even of Wycherley's — comedies. I am the gayer 
at least for it ; and I could never connect those sjDorts of a 
witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from 
them to imitation in real life. They are a world of them- 
selves almost as much as fairy land. Take one of their 
characters, male or female (with few exceptions they are 
alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous 
indignation sliall rise against the profligate wretch as 
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire ; because in a 
modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. 
The standard of 2^olice is the measure of jyolitical justice. 
The atmosphere will blight it ; it cannot live here. It 
has got into a moral world, where it has no business, 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 195 

from whicli it must needs fall headlong ; as dizzy, and 
incapable of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad 
spirit that has wandered unawares into the sphere of one 
of his Good Men, or Angels. But in its own world do 
we feel the creatiu-e is so very bad ? — The Fainalls and 
the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, 
in their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense ; in 
faot, they do not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged 
in their proper element. They break through no laws or 
conscientious restraints. They know of none. They 
have got out of Christendom into the land — what shall I 
call it ? — of cuckoldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where 
pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is 
altogether a speculative scene of things, which has no re- 
ference whatever to the world that is. No good person 
can be justly offended as a spectator, because no good 
person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every 
character in these plays- — the few exceptions only are 
mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worthless. The 
great art of Congreve is especially shown in this, that he 
has entirely excluded from his scenes — some little gene- 
rosities in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted — not 
only anything like a faultless character, but any pre- 
tensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether 
he did this designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as 
happy as the design (if design) was bold. I used to 
wonder at the strange power which his Way of the World 
in particular possesses of interesting you all along in the 
pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care 
nothing — for you neither hate nor love his personages — 
and I think it is owing to this very indifference for any, 
that you endm-e the whole. He has spread a privation 
of moral light, I will call it, rather than by the ugly 
name of palpable darkness, over his creations ; and his 
shadows flit before you without distinction or preference. 
Had he introduced a good character, a single gush of 
moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to actual life 
and actual duties, the impertinent G-oshen would have 



196 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

only lighted to the discoveiy of deformities, which now 
are none, because we think them none. 

Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his 
friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets, 
— the business of their brief existence, the imdivlded pur- 
suit of lawless gallantry. No other spring of action, or 
possible motive of conduct, is recognised ; principles 
which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of 
things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so trans- 
lating them. No such effects are produced, in their 
world. When we are among them, we are amongst a 
chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our 
usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their 
proceedings — for they have none among them. No peace 
of families is violated — for no family ties exist among 
them. No purity of the marriage bed is stained — for 
none is supposed to have a being. No deep affections 
are disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are snapped 
asimder — for affection's depth and wedded faith are not 
of the growth of that soil. There is neither right nor 
wrong, — gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — 
paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue, 
or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon 
or Dapperwit steal away Miss Martha; or who is the 
father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's children 1 

The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit 
as imconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at the 
battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, 
we take part against the puppets, and quite as imperti- 
nently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, 
out of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little 
transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage to 
imagine a state of things for which there is neither 
reward nor punishment. We cling to the painfid neces- 
sities of shame and blame. We would indict our very 
dreams. 

Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon 
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 197 

Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Con- 
greve and Wyclierley, but gathered some allays of the 
sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is im- 
possible that it should be now acted, though it continues, 
at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, 
when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. 
When I remember the gay boldness, the gracefid solemn 
plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice — to 
express it in a word — the downright acted villany of the 
part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual 
wickedness, — the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, — 
which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that char- 
acter, I must needs conclude the present generation of 
playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I 
freely confess that he divided the palm with me with his 
better brother ; that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. 
Not but there are passages, — like that, for instance, 
where Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor re- 
lation, — incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon 
by the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental 
comedy, either of which must destroy the other — but 
over these obstructions Jack's manner floated him so 
lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked you, 
than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality 
any pleasure ; you got over the paltry question as quickly 
as you could, to get back into the regions of pure comedy, 
where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial 
manner of Palmer in this character counteracted every 
disagreeable impression which you might have received 
from the contrast, supposing them real, between the two 
brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with the same 
faith with which you believed in Charles. The latter 
was a pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant 
poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incon- 
gruous ; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incom- 
patibilities ; the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant ; but 
it required the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the 
discordant elements. 



198 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now^ 
would not dare to do the part in the same manner. He 
would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend 
to unrealise, and so to make the character fascinating. 
He must take his cue from his spectators, who would 
expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to 
each other as the deathbeds of those geniuses are con- 
trasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have dis- 
appeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington 
Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard memory — (an exhi- 
bition as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost 
coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of death ; 
where the ghastly apprehensions of the former, — and 
truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork 
is not to be despised, — so finely contrast with the meek 
complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in like honey 
and butter, — with which the latter submits to the scythe 
of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with 
the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. 
What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half 
way the stroke of such a delicate mower 1 — John Palmer 
was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing 
to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter 
and his lady. You had the first intimation of a senti- 
ment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was 
meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious 
co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it. 
What was it to you if that half reality, the husband, was 
overreached by the puppetry — or the thin thing (Lady 
Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a 
plethory 1 The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were 
not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the 
stage in good time, that he did not live to this our age of 
seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone 
in good time. His manner would scarce have passed 
current in our day. We must love or hate — acquit or 
condemn — censure or pity — exert oiu" detestable cox- 
combry of moral judgment upon everything. Joseph 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 199 

Surface, to go clown now, must be a downright revolting 
villain — no compromise — his first appearance must shock 
and give horror — his specious plausibilities, which the 
pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such 
hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm 
even) could come, or was meant to come, of them, must 
inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real 
canting person of the scene — for the hypocrisy of Joseph 
has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's pro- 
fessions of a good heart centre in downright self-satis- 
faction) must be loved, and Joseph hated. To balance 
one disagreeable reality with another. Sir Peter Teazle 
must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor 
bridegroom, whose teasings while King acted it) were 
evidently as much played off at you, as they were meant 
to concern anybody on the stage, — he must be a real 
person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a person 
towards whom duties are to be acknowledged • — • the 
genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villanous seducer 
Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under his 
unfortunate match must have the downright pungency 
of life — -must (or should) make you not mirthful but im- 
comfortable, just as the same predicament would move 
you in a neighbour or old friend. 

The delicious scenes which give the play its name and 
zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if 
you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked 
in your real presence. Crab tree and Sir Benjamin — 
those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your 
mirth — must be ripened by this hot-bed process of real- 
ization into asps or amphisbsenas ; and Mrs. Candour — 
! frightful ! — become a hooded serpent. ! who that 
remembers Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly 
of the School for Scandal — in those two characters ; and 
charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as 
distinguished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter 
part — woidd forego the true scenic delight — the escape 
from life — the oblivion of consequences — the holiday 



200 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

barring out of the pedant Eeflection — those Saturnalia 
of two or three brief hours, well won from the world — 
to sit instead at one of our modern plays — to have his 
coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a 
moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals — dulled 
rather, and blunted, as a facidty without repose must be 
— and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional 
justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the 
spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that cost the 
author nothing 1 

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all 
its parts as this manager's comedy. Miss Farren had 
succeeded to Mrs. Abington in Lady Teazle ; and Smith, 
the original Charles, had retired when I first saw it. 
The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, 
remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry 
down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles after 
Smith ; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, 
was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gaiety of 
person. He brought with him no sombre recollections of 
tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault of having 
pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins 
of Hamlet or of Eichard to atone for. His failure in 
these parts was a passport to success in one of so opposite 
a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty 
sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity 
than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this 
part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He 
made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, 
as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his 
dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the 
shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling 
sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he de- 
livered each in succession, and cannot by any effort 
imagine how any of them could be altered for the better. 
No man could deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of 
Congreve or of Wycherley — because none imderstood it 
■ — half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 201 

for Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged 
sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would 
slumber over the level parts of an heroic character. His 
Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed 
to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty 
dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been 
touched by any since him — the playful court-bred spirit 
in- which he condescended to the players in Hamlet — the 
sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of 
Richard — disappeared with him. He had his sluggish 
moods, his torpors — biit they were the halting-stones and 
resting-place of his tragedy — politic savings, and fetches 
of the breath — husbandry of the lungs, where nature 
pointed him to be an economist — rather, I think than 
errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less pain- 
ful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance, — 
the "lidless dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy. 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 

Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this 
extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when I retired 
to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a 
manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest 
myself of it, by conjiu-ing up the most opposite associa- 
tions. I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest 
topics of life ; private misery, public calamity. All would 
not do : 

There the antic sate 

Mocking our state 

his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the 
strange things which he had raked together — his serpen- 
tine rod swagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, 
and the rest of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and Ms 
wilder commentary — till the passion of laughter, like 



202 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

grief in excess, relieved itself by its own weight, inviting 
the sleeja wliich in the first instance it had driven away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I 
fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more per- 
plexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one 
Mimden, but five hundred, were dancing before me, like 
the faces which, whether you will or no, come when you 
have been taking opium — all the strange combinations, 
which this strangest of all strange mortals ever shot his 
proper countenance into, from the day he came commis- 
sioned to dry up the tears of the town for the loss of the 
now almost forgotten Edwin. for the power of the 
pencil to have fixed them when I awoke ! A season or 
two since, there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I do 
not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. In 
richness and variety, the latter would not fall far short of 
the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one 
(but what a one it is !) of Listen ; but Mimden has none 
that you can properly pin down, and call his. When you 
think he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccount- 
able warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out 
an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not 
one, but legion ; not so much a comedian, as a company. 
If his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it 
might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes 
faces : applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere 
figure, denoting certain modifications of the human coun- 
tenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, 
as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as 
easily. I should not be surprised to see him some day 
put out the head of a river-horse : or come forth a pewitt, 
or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry 
— in old Dornton — difilise a glow of sentiment which has 
made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one 
man ; when he has come in aid of the iDulj^it, doing good 
to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some faint 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 203 

approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But 
in the grand grotesque of farce, Munclen stands out as 
single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange 
to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began, 
and must end, with himself. 

Can any man zvonder, like him 1 can any man see ghosts, 
like him 1 or Jight with his oimi shadow — " sessa" — as 
Ixe does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of 
Preston — where his alternations from the Cobbler to the 
Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep 
the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some 
Arabian Night were being acted before him. "Who like 
him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preter- 
natural interest over the commonest daily-life objects 1 A 
table or a joint-stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity 
equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with con- 
stellatory importance. You coidd not speak of it with 
more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. 
A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, 
rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden 
antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and 
his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots 
and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, 
contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He 
understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands 
wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like 
primaeval man with the sun and stars about him. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 

I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at 
will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family 
mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a 
better passion than envy ; and contemi3lations on the great 
and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its 
inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the 
bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present 
aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, at- 
tends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. 
In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty 
— an act of inattention on the part of some of the audi- 
tory — or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on 
that of the preacher, puts us by our best thoughts, dis- 
harmonising the place and the occasion. But woiddst 
thou know the beauty of holiness'? — go alone on some 
week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, 
traverse the cool aisles of some country church : think of 
the piety that has kneeled there — the congregations, old 
and young, that have found consolation there — the meek 
pastor — the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emo- 
tions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tran- 
quillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and 
motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep 
around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going 
some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains 



206 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of an old great house with which I had been impressed in 
this way in infancy. I was apjirised that the owner of it 
had lately pulled it down ; still I had a vague notion that 
it could not all have perished, — that so much solidity 
with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once 
into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand 
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it 
to — an antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. 
Where had stood the great gates 1 What bounded the 
court-yard ? Whereabout did the out-houses commence 1 
A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which 
was so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this 
rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their 
proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their pro- 
cess of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should 
have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried 
out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful 
storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and 
read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and 
flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haimted it 
about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer re- 
turns ; or a panel of the yellow-room. 

Why, every plank and panel of that house for me 
had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so 
much better than painting — not adorning merely, but 
peopling the wainscots — at which childliood ever and 
anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as 
quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary 
eye-encoimter with those stern bright visages, staring 
reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider 
than his description. Actseon in mid sprout, with the 
unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and the still more pro- 
voking and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel- 
fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 207 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle 
died — whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, 
with a passion of fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror- 
tainted, to hold communication with the past. — Sow shall 
they build it up again ? 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted 
that the traces of the splendour of past inmates were 
everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing — 
even to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and crumb- 
ling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told 
that children had once played there. But I was a lonely 
child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew 
every nook and corner, v/ondered and worshipped every- 
where. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother 
of thought as it is the feeder of love, of silence, and ad- 
miration. So strange a passion for the place possessed 
me in those years, that, though there lay — I shame to say 
how few roods distant from the mansion' — 'half hid by 
trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was the 
spell which bound me to the house, and such my carefulness 
not to pass its strict and proper precincts, that the idle 
waters lay unexplored for me ; and not till late in life, 
curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to my 
astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the 
Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, ex- 
tensive prospects — and those at no great distance from 
the house — I was told of such — what were they to me, 
being out of the boundaries of my Eden 1 So far from a 
wish to roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer 
the fences of my chosen prison, and have been hemmed in 
by a yet securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. 
I coidd have exclaimed with the garden-loving poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
An4 ob so close your circles lace, 
Tbat I may never leave this place ; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak. 
Ere I your silken bondage break, 



208 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Do you, brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me through.^ 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug fire-sides — 
the low -built roof — parlours ten feet by ten — frugal 
boards, and all the homeliness of home — these were the 
condition of my birth — the wholesome soil which I was 
planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest 
lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of something 
beyond, and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at 
the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to 
have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had 
on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importxmate 
race of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in his un- 
emblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's 
or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may 
warm himself into as gay a vanity as those who do inherit 
them. The claims of birth are ideal merely, and what 
herald shall go about to strip me of an idea 1 Is it tren- 
chant to their swords 1 can it be hacked off as a spur can 1 
or torn away like a tarnished garter 1 

What, else, were the families of the great to us 'i what 
pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or 
their capitulatory brass monuments 1 What to us the 
uninterrupted current of their bloods, if oiu- own did not 
answer within us to a cognate and corresponding ele- 
vation 1 

Or wherefore, else, tattered and diminished 'Scut- 
cheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely 
stairs, Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood 
poring upon thy mystic characters — thy emblematic sup- 
porters, with their prophetic "Eesurgam" — till, every 
dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very 
Gentility 1 Thou wert first in my morning eyes ; and of 
nights hast detained my steps from bedward, tiU it was 
but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. 

^ [Marvell, on Appleton Hoiise, to the Lord Fairfax.] 



BLAKESMOOR IN II SHIRE. 209 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritable 
change of blood, and not as empirics have fabled, by 
transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid 
trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags, 
and colours cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of 
two centi;ries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some 
Damoetas, — feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of 
Lincoln — did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the 
family trappings of this once proud Mgon ? repaying by 
a backward triumph the insults he might possibly have 
heaped in his life-time upon my poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present 
owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. 
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for 
a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to myself 
what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to 
soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s, and 

not the present family of that name, who had fled the 
old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, 
which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own 
family name, one — and then another — woidd seem to 
smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognise the 
new relationship ; while the rest looked grave, as it 
seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of 
fled posterity. 

The Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a 
lamb — that hung next the great bay window — with the 
bright yellow H — - — shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — 
so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a true Elia — 
Mildred Elia, I take it. 

Mine, too, Blakesmooe, was thy noble Marble Hall, 

with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Csesars — stately 

busts in marble — ranged round ; of whose countenances, 

young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of 

P 



210 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder ; but the mild 
Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of 
death, yet freshness of immortality. 

Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair 
of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror 
of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so common 
since, that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine, too, — whose else 1 — thy costly fruit-garden, with 
its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, 
rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with 
flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and 
there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state 
to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters 
backwarder still ; and, stretching still beyond, in old for- 
mality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and 
the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique 
image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not ; but child 
of Athens or old Kome paid never a sincerer worship to 
Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that 
fragmental mystery. 

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too 
fervently in your idol -worship, walks and windings of 
Blakesmgoe ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the 
plough passed over your pleasant places 1 I sometimes 
think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of 
their extinguished habitations there may be a hope — a 
germ to be revivified. 



POOR RELATIONS. 

A PooE Relation — is the most irrelevant thing in nature, 
— a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an odious ap- 
proximation, — a haunting conscience, — a preposterous 
shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity, — 
an unwelcome remembrancer, — a peipetually reciuring 
mortification, — a drain on your purse, — a more intoler- 



POOR RELATIONS. 211 

able dun upon yoiir pride, — a drawback upon success, — 
a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — a blot 
on yoiu' 'scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's 
head at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in 
your gate, — a Lazarus at yoiu- door, — a lion in your path, 
— a frog in yoiu- chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a 
mote in your eye,- — a triumph to your enemy, — an apology 
to-your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in 
harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Yoiu' heart telleth you 

"That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and 

respect ; that demands, and at the same time seems to 
despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — 
embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, 
and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in 
about dinner-time — when the table is full. He oflfereth ' 
to go away, seeing you have company — but is induced to 
stay. He fiUeth a chair, and your visitor's two children 
are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh upon 
open days, when your wife says, with some complacency, 

" My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He 

remembereth birth-days — and professeth he is fortunate 
to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, 
the turbot being small — yet suffereth himself to be im- 
portuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He 
sticketh by the port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty 
the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon 
him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of 
being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The 
guests think " they have seen him before." Every one 
speculateth upon his condition ; and the most part take 
him to be a — tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Chris- 
tian name, to imply that his other is the same with your 
own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had 
less diffidence. With half the familiarity, he might pass 
for a casual dependant ; with more boldness, he would be 
in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too 
humble for a friend ; yet taketh on him more state than 



212 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country 
tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 'tis odds, 
from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take him 
for one. He is asked to make one at the whist table ; 
refuseth on the score of poverty, and — resents being left 
out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go 
■for a coach — and lets the servant go. He recollects your 
grandfather ; and will thrust in some mean and quite un- 
important anecdote — of the family. He knew it when it 
was not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it 
now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what he 
calleth — favourable comparisons. "With a reflecting sort 
of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your fiu-ni- 
ture : and insults you with a special commendation of 
your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the lun is 
the more elegant shape ; but, after all, there was some- 
thing more comfortable about the old tea-kettle — which 
you must remember. He dare say you must find a great 
convenience in having a carriage of your own, and 
appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you 
have had your arms done on vellum yet ; and did not 
know, till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest 
of the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his com- 
pliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay pertina- 
cious ; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair 
into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly 
rid of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a 
female Poor Eelation. You may do something with the 
other; you may pass him ofi" tolerably well; but your 
indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old humor- 
ist," you may say, " and afi'ects to go threadbare. His 
circumstances are better than folks would take them to 
be. You are fond of having a Character at yoiu- table, 
and truly he is one." But in the. indications of female 
poverty there can be no disguise. ySTo woman dresses be- 
low herself from caprice\ The truth must out without 
shufiiing. "She is plainly related to the L 's; or 



POOR RELATIONS. 213 

what does she at their house 1" She is, la all probability, 
your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this 
is the case. — Her garb is something between a gentle- 
woman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predomi- 
nates. She is most provoldngly humble, and ostentatiously 
sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be re- 
pressed sometimes — aliquando stifflaminandus erat — but 
there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, 

and she begs to be helped — after the gentlemen. Mr. 

requests the honour of taking wine with her ; she hesitates 
between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former — 
because he does. She calls the servant Sir ; and insists 
on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper 
patronises her. The children's governess takes upon her 
to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a 
harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance 
of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of 
affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject 
the spirit of a gentleman. A little fooHsh blood is all 
that is betwixt him and a lady with a great estate. His 
stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity 
of an old woman, who persists in calling him " her son 
Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recom- 
pense his indignities, and float him again upon the bril- 
liant surface, under which it had been her seeming 
business and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, 
besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an 
Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank 

indeed. Poor W was of my own standing at Christ's, 

a fine classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a 
blemish, it was too much pride ; but its quality was in- 
off'ensive ; it was not of that sort which hardens the 
heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ; it only 
sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was the 
principle of self-respect carried as far as it could go, with- 
out infringing upon that respect, which he would have 
every one else equally maintain for himself. He woidd 



214 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

have you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a 
quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather older 
boys, and our tallness made u.s more obnoxious to observa- 
tion in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the 
alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude 
notice, when we have been out together on a holiday in 

the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W 

went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the 
dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the 
alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a passion- 
ate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion from 
the society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school 
array) clung to him mth Nessian venom. He thought 
himself ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer must 
have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his young days, 
possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity. 
In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, 
the poor student shrunk from observation. He found 
shelter among books, which insult not; and studies, that 
ask no questions of a youth's finances. He was lord of 
his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his 
domains. The healing influence of studious piusuits was 
upon him to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a 
healthy man, when the waywardness of his fate broke out 
against him with a second and worse malignity. The 
father of W had hitherto exercised the humble pro- 
fession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford. A sup- 
posed interest with some of the heads of colleges had now 
induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the 
hope of being employed upon some public works which 
were talked of. From that moment I read in the counte- 
nance of the young man the determination which at length 
tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person 
unacquainted with our universities, the distance between 
the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called — the 
trading part of the latter especially — is carried to an ex- 
cess that would appear harsh and incredible. The tem- 
perament of W 's father was diametrically the reverse 



POOR RELATIONS, 215 

of his own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing 

tradesman, who, with his sou upon his arm, would stand 
bowing and scrajjing, cap in hand, to anything that wore 
the semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber- 
fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obse- 
quiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things 

could not last. W must change the air of Oxford, 

or be suffocated. He chose the former ; and let the 
sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties 
as high as they can bear, censm-e the dereliction ; he can- 
not estimate the struggle. I stood with W , the last 

afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal 
dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High 

Street to the back of * * * * college, where W' kept 

his rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. 
I ventured to rally him — finding him in a better mood — 
upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the 
old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had 
caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his 
really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity or 

badge of gratitude to his saint. W looked up at 

the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted sign — 
and fled." A letter on his father's table, the next morn- 
ing, announced that he had accepted a commission in a 
regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among 
the first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with 
treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital 
so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor relationship 
is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic 
associations, that it is difficult to keep the account dis- 
tinct without blending. The earliest impressions which 
I received on this matter are certainly not attended with 
anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. 
At my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be 
found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged 
gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely 



216 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

appearance. His deportment was of the essence of 
gravity ; his words few or none ; and I was not to make 
a noise in his presence. I had little inclination to have 
done so — for my cue was to admire in silence. A par- 
ticular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which was in 
no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, 
which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the 
days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously 
rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he 
and my father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at 
Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I 
knew to be a place where all the money was coined — and 
I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful 
ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. 
He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A 
sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some 
inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in 
an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately being 
let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I 
wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of 
an habitual general respect which we all in common 
manifested towards him, would venture now and then to 
stand up against him in some argument touching their 
youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln 
are divided (as most of my readers know) between the 
dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked 
distinction formed an obvious division between the boys 
who lived above (however brought together in a common 
school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the 
plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these 
young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading Moun- 
taineer ; and woidd still maintain the general superiority 
in skill and hardihood of the Above Boys (his own 
faction) over the Beloio Boys (so were they called), of 
which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. 
Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic — the 
only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought 
out — and bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the 



POOR RELATIONS. 217 

recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. 
But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, 
generally contrived to tmii the conversation upon some 
adroit iDy- commendation of the old Minster; in the 
general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in 
the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, 
could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their 
less important differences. Once only I saw the old 
gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with anguish 
the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never 
come here again." He had been pressed to take another 
plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as 
the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had 
refused with a resistance amounting to rigour, when my 
aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, 
in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would 
sometimes press civility out of season — uttered the 
following memorable apiDlication — "Do take another 
slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." 
The old gentleman said nothing at the time — but he took 
occasion in the course of the evening, when some argu- 
ment had intervened between them, to utter with an 
emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills 
me now as I write it — "Woman, you are superannuated!" 
John Billet did not survive long, after the digesting of 
this affront ; but he survived long enough to assure me 
that peace was actually restored ! and if I remember 
aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the 
place of that which had occasioned the offence. He 
died at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, 
what he accounted, a comfortable independence ; and 
with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which 
were found in his escritoir after his decease, left the 
world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, 
and that he had never been obliged to any man for a 
sixpence. This was — a Poor Relation. 



218 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND 
EEADING. 

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the 
forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of 
quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts 
of his own. — Lord Fop2nngton, in " The Relapse." 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so mucli 
struck witli this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has 
left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of 
his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on 
this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsider- 
able portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I 
dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to 
lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not 
walking, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. Books 
think for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbiury is not too 
genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read 
anything which I call a booh. There are things in that 
shape which I cannot allow for such. 

In this catalogue of hoohs which are no booJcs — hihlia 
a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket 
Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back. 
Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : the 
works of Hume, Gibbon, Eobertson, Beattie, Soame 
Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which "no 
gentleman's library should be without : " the Histories 
of Flavins Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's 
Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read 
almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, 
so imexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 219 

in hoohs'' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, 
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, 
thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down 
a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some 
kind-hearted play -book, then, opening what " seem its 
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. 
To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find — Adam 
Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of block- 
headed Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set 
out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe 
of that good leather woidd comfortably re -clothe my 
shivering folios, would renovate Paracelsus himself, and 
enable old Rayimmd LuUy to look like himself again 
in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long 
to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their 
spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum 
of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it 
can be afi'orded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of 
books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of 
magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or 
half-binding (with russia backs ever) is our costume. A 
Shakspeare or a Milton (imless the first editions), it were 
mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession 
of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them 
(the things themselves being so common), strange to say, 
raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in 
the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I 
maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful 
to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and 
worn-out appearance, nay, the very odom* (beyond russia) 
if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of 
an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or Vicar of 
Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand thumbs 
that have tm-ned over their pages with delight ! — of the 
lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, 
or hard-working mantua-maker) after her long day's 
needle -toil, running far into midnight, when she has 



220 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her 
cares, as in some Lethean cnp, in spelling ont their 
enchanting contents ! Who would have them a whit less 
soiled? What better condition could we desire to see 
them in 1 

In some respects the better a book is, the less it 
demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and 
all that class of perpetually self- reproductive volumes — 
G-reat Nature's Stereotypes — we -see them individually 
perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them 
to be " eterne." But where a book is at once both good 
and rare — where the individual is almost the species, and 
when thai perishes, 

We know not -where is that Promethean torch 
That can its light relumine, — 

such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of 
Newcastle, by his Duchess— no casket is rich enough, no 
casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such 
a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem 
hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of writers, 
such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his 
prose works. Fuller — of whom we have reprints, yet the 
books themselves, though they go about, and are talked 
of here and there, we know have not endenizened them- 
selves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as 
to become stock books — ^it is good to possess these in 
durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio 
of Shakspeare. [You cannot make a ^je^ book of an 
author whom everybody reads.] I rather prefer the com- 
mon editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and 
with 2ylates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps 
or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and, withoiit pre- 
tending to any supposable euuilation with it, are so much 
better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. 
I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about 
his Plays, and I like those editions of him best which 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 221 

have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. — On the 
contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in 
Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I 
have no sympathy with them. If they were as much 
read as the current editions of the other poet, I shoidd 
prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not 
know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the 
Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of un- 
earthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to 
expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to 
modern censure 1 what hapless stationer coidd dream of 
Burton ever becoming popular? — The wretched Malone 
coidd not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Strat- 
ford chm'ch to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old 
Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion 
depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eye- 
brow, hair, the very dress he used to wear — -the only 
authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these 
curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him 

over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been 

a justice of peace for "Warwickshire, I would have clapped 
both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a 
pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient 
trouble-tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the 
names of some of oiu* poets sound sweeter, and have a 
finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of 
Milton or of Shakspeare ? It may be that the latter are 
more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The 
sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the men- 
tion, are. Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthorn- 
den, and Cowley. 

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. 
In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is 
quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy 
Queen for a stop-gap or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' 
sermons ? 



222 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be 
played before you enter upon him. But he brings his 
music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile 
thoughts, and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of 
ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a sea- 
son the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — 
to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person 
listening. More than one — and it degenerates into an 
audience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, 
are for the eye to glide over only. It wiU not do to read 
them out. I could never listen to even the better kind 
of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of 
the Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much indi- 
vidual time) for one of the clerks — -who is the best 
scholar — to commence upon the Times or the Chronicle 
and recite its entire contents aloud, ^3ro bono 2mhlico. 
With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is 
singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a 
fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he 
communicates as some discovery. Another follows with 
his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length 
by piecemeal. Seldom -readers are slow readers, and, 
without this expedient, no one in the company would 
probably ever travel through the contents of a whole 
paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays 
one down without a feeling of disappointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at 
Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the 
waiter bawling out incessantly, "The Chronicle is in 
hand. Sir." 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your 
supper — what can be more delightful than to find lying 
in the window -seat, left there time out of mind by the 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 223 

carelessness of some former guest — two or three mimbers 
of the old Town and Oomitry Magazine, with its amusing 

tete-a-tete pictures — " The Eoyal Lover and Lady G ;" 

"■ The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," — and such- 
like antiquated scandal? "Would you exchange it — at 
that time, and in that place — for a better book 1 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it 
so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise 
Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him — but he missed 
the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a maga- 
zine, or a light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues 
of some cathedral alone, and reading Gandide. 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than 
having been once detected — by a familiar damsel — re- 
clined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her 
Cythera) reading — Pamela. There was nothing in the 
book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposm-e ; 
but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed deter- 
mined to read in company, I could have wished it had 
been — any other book. We read on very sociably for 
a few pages ; and, not finding the author much to her 
taste, she got up, and — went away. Gentle casuist, I 
leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there 
was one between us) was the property of the nymph or 
the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never 
get the secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I 
cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian min- 
ister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as 
yet Skinner's Street was not), between the hoiu's of ten 
and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. 
I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond 
my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keep- 
ing clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter 
with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly 
put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have 
left me worse than indifferent to the five points. 



224 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

There is a class of street readers, whom I can never 
contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not 
having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little 
learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, 
casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking 
when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page 
after page, expecting every moment when he shall inter- 
pose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the 

gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , 

in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes 
of Clarissa, when the stall -keeper damped his laudable 
ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) 
whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, 
that under no circumstance in his life did he ever peruse 
a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those 
uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moral- 
ised upon this subject in two very touching but homely 
stanzas : 

I saw a boy with eager eye 
Open a book upon a stall, 
And read, as he'd devour it all ; 
Which, when the stall-man did espy, 
Soon to the boy I heard him call, 
" You Sir, you never buy a book, 
Therefore in one you shall not look." 
The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 
He wish'd he never had been taught to read, 
Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy. 

I soon perceived another boy, 

Who look'd as if he had not any 

Food, for that day at least — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wished he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



STAGE ILLUSION. 225 



STAGE ILLUSION. 

A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion to 
the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion can 
in any case be perfect, is not the question. The nearest 
approach to it, we are told, is when the actor appears 
wholly unconscious of the presence of spectators. In 
tragedy — in all which is to affect the feelings — this undi- 
vided attention to his stage business seems indispensable. 
Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest 
tragedians ; and while these references to an audience, in 
the shape of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or 
palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for the purposes 
of dramatic interest may be said to be produced in spite 
of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, 
in certain characters in comedy, especially those which are 
a little extravagant, or which involve some notion repug- 
nant to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest 
skill in the comedian when, without absolutely appealing 
to an audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with 
them; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a 
party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the 
mode of doing this ; but we speak only of the great artists 
in the profession. 

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel 
in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, 
cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon a stage 
would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most of us 
remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could anything be 
more agreeable, more pleasant? "We loved the rogues. 
How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the 
actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, 
even in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not 
half such a coward as we took him for 1 We saw all the 
common symptoms of the malady upon him ; the quivering 



226 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

lip, the cowering knees, the teeth chattering ; and could 
have sworn " that man was frightened." But we forgot 
all the while — or kept it almost a secret to ourselves — 
that he never once lost his self-possession ; that he let out, 
by a thousand droll looks and gestures — meant at us, and 
not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the 
scene, that his confidence in his own resources had never 
once deserted him. Was this a genuine picture of a 
coward ; or not rather a likeness, which the clever artist 
contrived to palm upon us instead of an original ; while 
we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of 
greater pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of the 
imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we 
know to be concomitants of cowardice in real life, could 
have given us ? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endur- 
able on the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort 
of subreference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms 
the character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming 
to engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which 
he holds his money-bags and parchments 1 By this subtle 
vent half of the hatefulness of the character — the self- 
closeness with which in real life it coils itself up from the 
sympathies of men — evaporates. The miser becomes 
sympathetic ; i.e., is no genuine miser. Here again a 
diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable 
reality. 

Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old men, 
which produce only pain to behold in the realities, coun- 
terfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic 
appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction 
that they are beinff acted before us ; that a likeness only 
is going on, and not the thing itself They please by 
being done under the life, or beside it ; not to the life. 
When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed? or 
only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to 
recognise, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a 
reality ? 



STAGE ILLUSION. 227 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too 
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing 
could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. 
Emery ; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters 
of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid ex- 
clusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful 
blindness and oblivion of everything before the curtain 
into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. 
He was out of keeping with the rest of the dramatis 
personce. There was as little link between him and them, 
as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a third 
estate — dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. Individually 
considered, his execution was masterly. But comedy is 
not this unbending thing ; for this reason, that the same 
degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious 
scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded to the two 
things may be illustrated by the different sort of truth 
which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or a 
merry story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in 
any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse 
to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a 
mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content 
with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same vsdth dra- 
matic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an 
audience naturalised behind the scenes — taken into the 
interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders, however. 
There is something ungracious in a comic actor holding 
himself aloof from all participation or concern with those 
who are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must see 
the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it ; but an 
old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by con- 
scious words and looks express it, as plainly as he can 
speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in 
tragedy, an Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious 
passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt with 
which he is treated. But when the pleasant impertinent 
of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and 
raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the 



228 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

studious man with taking up Ms leisure, or making his 
house his home, the same sort of contempt expressed 
(however natural) would destroy the balance of delight 
in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor 
who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature ; 
he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express 
only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as is con- 
sistent with the pleasure of comedy. In other words, his 
perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the in- 
truder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and 
more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone 
which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel, his 
real -life manner will destroy the whimsical and purely 
dramatic existence of the other character (which to render 
it comic demands an antagonist comicality on the part of 
the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant 
for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of 
impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in 
us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon 
any worthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of 
his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort 
in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and 
Easy. 

Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice 
to show that comic acting at least does not always 
demand from the performer that strict abstraction from 
all reference to an audience which is exacted of it ; but 
that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, 
and all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a 
judicious understanding, not too openly announced, be- 
tween the ladies and gentlemen — on both sides of the 
curtain. 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 229 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 

JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length 
hast thou flown 1 to what genial region are we permitted 
to conjecture that thou hast flitted 1 

Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest-time 
was still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus ? 
or art thou enacting Rover (as we would gladlier think) 
by wandering Elysian streams ? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief 
antics amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to 
thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no 
better than a county gaol, forsooth, or some house of 
durance vile, whereof the five senses are the fetters. 
Thou knewest better than to be in a hurry to cast ojff 
these gyves ; and had notice to quit, I fear, before thou 
wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It 
was thy Pleasure -House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices : 
thy Louvre, or thy "White-Hall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now 1 
or when may we expect thy aerial house-warming 1 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed 
Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the 
school-men admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and 
unchrisom babes) there may exist — not far perchance 
from that store-house of all vanities, which Milton saw in 
visions, — a Limbo somewhere for Players ? and that 

Up thither like aerial vapours fly- 
Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 
Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 
All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, 
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 
Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 
Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. — 



230 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not im- 
properly supposed thy Eegent Planet upon earth), mayst 
thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks, great dis- 
embodied Lessee 1 but Lessee still, and still a manager. 

In G-reen Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse 
beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) 
circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sin- 
ful Phantasy / 

Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, 
Robert William Elliston ! for as yet we know not thy 
new name in heaven. 

It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou 
shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian 
wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by 
the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling "Sculls, 
Sculls !" to which, with waving hand, and majestic 
action, thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt 
monosyllables, "No: Oars." 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference 
between king and cobbler ; manager and call-boy ; and, 
if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are 
quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (0 ignoble 
levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently de- 
parted candle-snuffer. 

But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of histri- 
onic robes, and private vanities ! what denudations to the 
bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a 
foot within his battered lighter. 

Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy 
own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole 
property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a 
navy) ; the judge's ermine ; the coxcomb's wig ; the snuff- 
box a la Foppington — all must overboard, he positively 
swears — and that Ancient Mariner brooks no denial ; for, 
since the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, 
Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small taste for 
theatricals. 



ELLISTONIANA. 231 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight ; p'^ra 
et p%da anima. 

But, bless me, how little you look ! 

So shall we all look — kings and keysars — stripped for 
the last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu pleasant, and 
thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for many 
a heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless extrava- 
ganzas, public or domestic. 

Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, 
leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars — honest 
Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their 
particoloured existence here upon earth,- — making account 
of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy real life, as 
we call it (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour 
than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of the Drury), 
as but of so many echoes, natural re-percussions, and re- 
sults to be expected from the assimied extravagancies of 
thy secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage — after a 
lenient castigation with rods lighter than of those Medu- 
sean ringlets, but just enough to "whip the offending 
Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the 
right hand gate — the o. p. side of Hades — that conducts 
to masques and merry-makings in the Theatre Royal of 
Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 



ELLISTONIANA. 

My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss 
we all deplore, was but slight. 

My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened 
into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was 
over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly 
entered upon by a branch of his family. E., whom 
nothing misbecame — to auspicate, I suppose, the filial 



232 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

concern, and set it a-going with a lustre — was serving in 
person two damsels fair, who had come into the shop 
ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but in 
reality to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping 
some conference. With what an air did he reach down 
the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of the worth 
of the work in question, and launching out into a disser- 
tation on its comparative merits with those of certain 
IDublications of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted 
customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their 
authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gentleman in 
comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves 
in King Street. I admired the histrionic art, by which 
he contrived to carry clean away every notion of disgrace, 
from the occupation he had so generously submitted to ; 
and from that horn* I judged him, with no after repent- 
ance, to be a person with whom it would be a felicity to 
be more acquainted. 

To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be 
superfluous. With his blended private and professional 
habits alone I have to do ; that harmonious fusion of the 
manners of the player into those of every-day life, which 
brought the stage boards into streets and dining-parlours, 
and kept up the play when the play was ended. — " I like 
Wrench," a friend was saying to him one day, "because 
he is the same natural, easy creature, on the stage, that 
he is o^"." "My case exactly," retorted EUiston — with 
a charming forgetfulness, that the converse of a pro- 
position does not always lead to the same conclusion — " I 
am the same person off the stage that I am on." The 
inference, at first sight, seems identical ; but examine it a 
little, and it confesses only, that the one performer was 
never, and the other always, acting. 

And in truth this was the charm of EUiston's private 
deportment. You had spirited performance always going 
on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a 
monarch takes up his casual abode for the night, the 
poorest hovel which he honours by his sleeping in it. 



ELLISTONIANA. 233 

becomes ?^wo facto for that time a palace ; so wherever 
EUiston walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. 
He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, 
and set up his portable play-house at corners of streets, 
and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pavements he 
trod the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to be 
passionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy spontan- 
eously rose beneath his feet. Now this was hearty, and 
showed a love for his art. So Apelles alivays painted — 
in thought. So G. D. always poetises. I hate a luke- 
warm artist. I have known actors — and some of them 
of EUiston's own stamp — who shall have agreeably been 
amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through 
the two or three hours of their dramatic existence ; but 
no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter, but 
a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their facidties. They 
emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, 
servants, etc. Another shall have been expanding your 
heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even 
beats with yearnings of universal sympathy ; you abso- 
lutely long to go home and do some good action. The 
play seems tedious, till you can get fairly out of the 
house, and realise your laudable intentions. At length 
the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of all 
that is amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. 
EUiston was more of a piece. Did he play Eanger ? and 
did Eanger fill the general bosom of the town with satis- 
faction 1 why should he not be Eanger, and diflFuse the 
same cordial satisfaction among his private' circles 1 with 
his temperament, his animal spirits, his good nature, his 
follies perchance, could he do better than identify him- 
self with his impersonation 1 Are we to like a pleasant 
rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs of 
aversion for the identical character, presented to us in 
actual life 1 or what would the performer have gained by 
divesting himself of the impersonation 1 Could the man 
EUiston have been essentiaUy different from his part, 
even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, in 



234 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, the 
'scape-goat trickeries of the prototype ? 

" But there is something not natural in this ever- 
lasting acting ; we want the real man." 

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, 
whom you cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious 
trappings which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently 
upon him 1 "What if it is the nature of some men to be 
highly artificial? The fault is least reprehensible in 
players. Gibber was his own Foppington, with almost 
as much wit as Vanbrugh could add to it. 

" My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson speak- 
ing of Lord Bacon, — "was never increased towards him 
by his place or hono^irs. But I have, and do reverence 
him for the greatness, that was only proper to himself; 
in that he seemed to me ever one of the greatest men, 
that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever 
prayed that Heaven would give him strength ; for great- 
ness he could not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely less con- 
spicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than in 
my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that an 
unexpected elevation to the direction of a great London 
Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all 
changed his nature, knew not the essential greatness of 
the man whom they disparage. It was my fortune to 
encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its 
punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), 
on the morning of his election to that high office. Grasp- 
ing my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered, 
— "Have you heard the news'?" — then, with another look 
following up the blow, he subjoined, " I am the future 
manager of Drury Lane Theatre." — Breathless as he saw 
me, he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely 
stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new-blown 
dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. 
Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. This was 
in his great style. 



ELLISTONIANA. 235 

But was he less great (be witness, ye powers of 
Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the 
consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for a more 
illustrious exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an 
image of Imperial France), when, in melancholy after- 
years, again, much near the same spot, I met him, 
when that sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and 
his dominion was curtailed to the petty managership, 
and part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, his Elba ? 
He still played nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in 
parts, alas ! allotted to him, not magnificently distributed 
by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and mag- 
nificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur 
in the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to 
his more lofty intellectual pretensions, " Have you heard " 
(his customary exordium) — " have you heard," said he, 
" how they treat me 1 they put me in comedy ^ Thought 
I —but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal inter- 
ruption — " where could they have put you better ? " 
Then, after a pause — "Where I formerly played Eomeo, 
I now play Mercutio," — and so again he stalked away, 
neither staying, nor caring for, responses. 

0, it was a rich scene,— but Sir A C , the 

best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame 
narrative almost as well as he sets a fractiire, alone could 
do justice to it, — that I was a witness to, in the tarnished 
room (that had once been green) of that same little 
Olympic. There, after his deposition from Imperial 
Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was 
his "highest heaven;" himself "Jove in his chair." 
There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of 
prompter, was brought for judgment — how shall I 
describe her 1 — one of those little tawdry things that flirt 
at the tails of choruses — a probationer for the town, in 
either of its senses— the pertest Kttle drab — a dirty 
fringe and appendage of the lamp's smoke — who, it 
seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a " highly 
respectable " audience — had precipitately quitted her 



236 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents 
in disgust. 

" And how dare you," said her manager, — assuming 
a censorial severity, which would have crushed the confi- 
dence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Eebel 
herself of her professional caprices — I verily believe, he 
thought her standing before him— "how dare you. Madam, 
withdraw yom'self, without a notice, from your theatrical 
duties'?" "I was hissed. Sir." "And you have the 
presumption to decide upon the taste of the town V "I 
don't know that, Sir, but I will never stand to be hissed," 
was the subjoinder of young Confidence — when gathering 
up his features into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and 
expos tulatory indignation — in a lesson, never to have been 
lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood before 
him — his words were these : " They have hissed me." 

'Twas the identical argument h fortiori, which the 
son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, 
to persuade him to take his destiny with a good grace. 
" I too am mortal." And it is to be believed that in 
both cases the rhetoric missed of its application, for want 
of a proper understanding with the faculties of the re- 
spective recipients. 

"Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was 
covu-teously conducting me over the benches of his Surrey 
Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day 
waning grandeur. 

Those who knew EUiston, will know the manner in 
which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words 
I am about to record. One proud day to me he took his 
roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had 
superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather plenti- 
ful partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with 
the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for 
the humility of the fare, observing that for my own part 
I never ate but of one dish at dinner. " I too never eat 
but one thing at dinner," — was his reply — then after a. 
pause — " reckoning fish as nothing." The manner was 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 237 

all. It was as if by one peremptory sentence he had 
decreed the annihilation of all the savoury esculents, 
which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours 
forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This 
was greatness, tempered with considerate tenderness to 
the feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer, 

Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston ! 
and not lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which 
says that thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should 
repose imder no inscription but one of pure Latinity. 
Classical was thy bringing up ! and beautiful was the 
feeling on thy last bed, which, connecting the man with 
the boy, took thee back to thy latest exercise of imagi- 
nation, to the days when, undreaming of Theatres and 
Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early ripe one, 
under the roofs builded by the munificent and pious Colet. 
For thee the Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall 
silence this crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said 
so before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to 
these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such 
as the neighbourhood of Henley aff'ords in abimdance, on 
the banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or 
other my cousin contrives to wheedle me, once in three 
or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old attachments 
cling to her in spite of experience. We have been dull 
at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, 
dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment 
doing dreary penance at — Hastings ! — and all because we 
were happy many years ago for a brief week at Margate. 
That was our first sea -side experiment, and many cir- 
cumstances combined to make it the most agreeable 
holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, 



238 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

and we had never been from home so long together in 
company. 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy 
weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accom- 
modations — ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water 
niceness of the modern steam-packet ? To the winds and 
waves thou committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst 
ask no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cal- 
drons. With the gales of heaven thou wentest swim- 
mingly; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still 
with sailor -like patience. Thy course was natural, not 
forced, as in a hotbed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the 
breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke — ^a great sea 
chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep ; or liker to 
that fire-god parching up Scamander. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their 
coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of any- 
thing like contempt) to the raw questions, which we of 
the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, 
as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement 1 
'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy mediimi, thou 
shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating inter- 
preter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable ambas- 
sador between sea and land ! — whose sailor-trousers did 
not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted 
denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter 
apron over them, with thy neat-fingered practice in thy 
culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland 
nurture heretofore — a master cook of Eastcheap ? How 
busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, 
mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here, there, like an- 
other Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, 
yet with kindlier ministrations — not to assist the tempest, 
but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, 
to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might 
haply raise in our crude land -fancies. And when the 
o'erwashing billows drove us below deck (for it was far 
gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather), 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 239 

how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our 
comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial 
conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confinement 
of thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very 
inviting, little cabin ! 

"With these additaments to boot, we had on board a 
fellow -passenger, whose discourse in verity might have 
begtuled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have 
made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. 
He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young man, re- 
markably handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and 
an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in 
fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. He 
was none of yoiu- hesitating, half story-tellers (a most 
painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your 
belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can 
swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets of your 
patience — but one who committed downright, daylight 
depredations upon his neighbour's faith. He did not 
stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty, 
thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once into the depths 
of your credulity. I partly believe, he made pretty sure 
of his company. Not many rich, not many wise, or 
learned, composed at that time the common stowage of a 
Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as 
unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse 
name) as Aldermanbury, or "Watling Street, at that time 
of day could have supplied. There might be an excep- 
tion or two among us, but I scorn to make any invidious 
distinctions among such a jolly, companionable ship's 
company as those were whom I sailed with. Something 
too must be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the 
confident fellow told us half the legends on land which 
he favoured us with on the other element, I flatter my- 
self the good sense of most of us would have revolted. 
But we were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar 
about us, and the time and place disposed us to the 
reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time 



240 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

has obliterated from my memory much of his wild 
fablings ; and the rest would appear but dull, as written, 
and to be read on shore. He had been Aide-de-camp 
(among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian 
Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the head of the 
King of Carimania on horseback. He, of course, married 
the Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in 
the politics of that court, combining with the loss Of his 
consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; but, with 
the rapidity of a magician, he transported himself, along 
with his hearers, back to England, Avhere we stUl found 
him in the confidence of great ladies. There was some 
story of a princess — Elizabeth, if I remember — having 
intrusted to his care an extraordinary casket of jewels, 
upon some extraordinary occasion — but, as I am not 
certain of the name or circumstance at this distance of 
time, I must leave it to the Eoyal daughters of England 
to settle the honour among themselves in private. I 
cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I 
perfectly remember that, in the course of his travels, he 
had seen a phoenix ; and he obligingly undeceived us of 
the vulgar error, that there is but one of that species at 
a time, assuring us that they were not uncommon in 
some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had found the 
most implicit listeners. His dreaming fancies had trans- 
ported us beyond the "ignorant present." But when 
(still hardying more and more in his triumphs over our 
simplicity) he went on to affirm that he had actually 
sailed through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it 
really became necessary to make a stand. And here I 
must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one 
of our party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his 
most deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, 
made bold to assure the gentleman, that there must be 
some mistake, as "the Colossus in question had been 
destroyed long since;" to whose opinion, delivered with 
all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede 
thus much, that "the figure was indeed a little damaged." 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 241 

This was the only opposition he met with, and it did not 
at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his 
fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with 
stUl more complacency than ever, — conj&rmed, as it were, 
by the extreme candour of that concession. With these 
prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the 
Eeculvers, which one of our own company (having been 
the *voyage before) immediately recognizing, and pointing 
out to us, was considered by us as no ordinary seaman. 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a 
different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, 
very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the 
sea, with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then some 
snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and 
they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him 
whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one being 
with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring 
without stirring ; and when some of us pulled out our 
j)rivate stores — our cold meat and our salads — he pro- 
duced none, and seemed to want none. Only a solitary 
biscuit he had laid in ; provision for the one or two days 
and nights, to which these vessels then were oftentimes 
obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer acquaint- 
ance with him, which he seemed neither to court nor 
decline, we learned that he was going to Margate, with 
the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there for 
sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, which appeared 
to have eaten all over him. He expressed great hopes of a 
cure 3 and when we asked him whether he had any friends 
where he was going, he replied, " he had no friends." 

These pleasant, and some mournfid passages, with the 
first sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a 
sense of holidays, and out-of-door adventure, to me that 
had been pent up in populous cities for many months 
before, — have left upon my mind the fragrance as of 
siunmer days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their 
remembrance for cold and wintry hours to chew upon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some 
R 



242 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

unwelcome comparisons) if I endeavour to accoimt for 
the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons 
confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this 
occasion), at the sight of the sea for the first time ? I 
think the reason usually given — referring to the incapa- 
city of actual objects for satisfying our preconceptions of 
them — scarcely goes deep enough into the question. Let 
the same person see a lion, an elephant, a mountain for 
the first time in his life, and he shall perhaps feel himself 
a little mortified. The things do not fill up that space 
which the idea of them seemed to take up in his mind. 
But they have still a correspondency to his fii'st notion, 
and in time grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar 
impression : enlarging themselves (if I may say so) upon 
familiarity. But the sea remains a disappointment. Is 
it not, that in the latter we had expected to behold 
(absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of 
imagination, unavoidably) not a definite object, as those 
wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, 
but all the sea at once, the commensurate antagonist 
OF THE EARTH ? I do not Say we tell ourselves so much, 
but the craving of the mind is to be satisfied with no- 
thing less. I will suppose the case of a young person of 
fifteen (as I then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but 
from description. He comes to it for the first time — all 
that he has been reading of it all his life, and that the 
most enthusiastic part of life, — all he has gathered from 
narratives of wandering seamen, — what he has gained 
from true voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously 
from romance and poetry, — crowding their images, and 
exacting strange tributes from expectation.— He thinks 
of the great deep, and of those who go down unto it ; of 
its thousand isles, and of the vast continents it washes ; 
of its receiving the mighty Plata, or Orellana, into its 
bosom, without disturbance, or sense of augmentation; of 
Biscay swells, and the mariner 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant labouring round tlie stormy Cape ; 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 243 

of fatal rocks, and the " still -vexed Bermoothes j" of 
great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, 
and sumless treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring 
depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all that 
is terrible on earth — • 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, and 
shells; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles; of mermaids' 
grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be 
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the 
tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him with con- 
fused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the actual 
object opens first upon him, seen (in tame weather, too, 
most likely) from our unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip 
of sea-water, as it shows to him — what can it prove but 
a very imsatisfying and even diminutive entertainment ? 
Or if he has come to it from the mouth of a river, was it 
much more than the river widening 1 and, even out of 
sight of land, what had he but a flat watery horizon about 
him, nothing comparable to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, 
his familiar object, seen daily without dread or amaze- 
ment? — Who, in similar circumstances, has not been 
tempted to exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir, 

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all i 

I love town or country ; but this detestable Cinque 
Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting 
out their starved foliage from between the horrid fissures 
of dusty innutritions rocks ; which the amateur calls 
" verdure to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and 
they show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water- 
brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. 
I cannot stand all day on the naked beach, watching the 
capricious hues of the sea, shifting like the colours of a 
dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows 



244 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of this island-prison, I would fain retire into the interior 
of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on 
it, over it, across it. It hinds me in with chains, as of 
iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should not so feel in 
Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. There is 
no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive 
resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stock- 
brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses that coquet 
with the Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive 
shape, and what it ought to have remained, a fair, honest 
fishing-town, and no more, it were something — with a few 
stragghng fishermen's huts scattered about, artless as its 
cliffs, and with their materials filched from them, it were 
something. I could abide to dwell with Meshech ; to 
assort with fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, or I 
dream there are, many of this latter occupation here. 
Their faces become the place. I like a smuggler. He is 
the only honest thief He robs nothing but the revenue 
— an abstraction I never greatly cared about. I coidd go 
out with them in their mackerel boats, or about their less 
ostensible business, with some satisfaction. I can even 
tolerate those poor victims to monotony, who from day to 
day pace along the beach, in endless ijrogress and recur- 
rence, to watch their illicit countrymen — townsfolk or 
brethren, perchance — whistling to the sheathing and un- 
sheathing of their cutlasses (their only solace), who, under 
the mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated 
civil warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, 
to show their detestation of run hoUands, and zeal for Old 
England, But it is the visitants from town, that come 
here to say that they have been here, with no more relish 
of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace might be supposed 
to have, that are my aversion, I feel like a foolish dace 
in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself 
here as for them. What can they want here ? If they 
had a true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all 
this land luggage with them ] or why pitch their civilized 
tents in the desert % What mean these scanty book- 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 245 

rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea 
were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read 
strange matter in " 1 what are their foolish concert-rooms, 
if they come, as they would fain be thought to do, to 
listen to the music of the waves 1 All is false and hollow 
pretension. They come because it is the fashion, and to 
spoil the nature of the place. They are, mostly, as I have 
said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the better sort 
of them — now and then, an honest citizen (of the old 
stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down 
his wife and daughters to taste the sea breezes. I always 
know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in 
their comitenance. A day or two they go wandering on 
the shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and thinking them 
great things ; but, in a poor week, imagination slackens : 
they begin to discover that cockles produce no pearls, and 
then — then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty crea- 
tures (I know they have not the courage to confess it 
themselves), how gladly would they exchange their sea- 
side rambles for a Sunday walk on the green sward of 
their accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

I would ask one of these sea-charmed emigrants, who 
think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what 
would their feelings be if some of the unsophisticated 
aborigines of this place, encoiu-aged by their courteous 
questionings here, should venture, on the faith of such 
assured sympathy between them, to return the visit, and 
come up to see — London. I must imagine them with 
their fishing-tackle on their back, as we carry our town 
necessaries. What a sensation woidd it cau.se in Loth- 
bury ! What vehement laughter would it not excite 
aniong 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street ! 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects 
can feel their true and natiu-al nourishment at these sea- 
places. Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners 
and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The salt foam 



246 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

seems to nourish a spleen, I am not half so good-natured 
as by the milder waters of my natural river. I would 
exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallow 
for ever about the banks of Thamesis. 



THE CONVALESCENT. 

A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the 
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for 
some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has re- 
duced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any topic 
foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from me 
this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's 
dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for 
what else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie 
a-bed, and draw daylight curtains about him ; and, shut- 
ting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the 
works which are going on imder it 1 To become insen- 
sible to all the operations of life, except the beatings of 
one feeble jDidse '? 

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the 
patient lords it there ; what caprices he acts without con- 
trol ! how king-like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and 
tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and 
flatting, and moulding it, to the ever-varying requisitions 
of his throbbing temples. . 

He changes sides offcener than a politician. Now he 
lies full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely, 
head and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses him 
of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute. 
They are his Mare Clausiun. 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self 
to himself ! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme self- 
ishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the 
Two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think 



THE CONVALESCENT. 247 

of but how to get well. What passes out of doors, or 
within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects 
him not. 

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the 
event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the 
marring of his dearest friend. He was to be seen trudg- 
ing about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters of the 
town at once, jogging this witness, refreshing that solici- 
tor. The cause was to come on yesterday. He is abso- 
lutely as indifferent to the decision as if it were a question 
to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure from some whisper- 
ing, going on about the house, not intended for his hearing, 
he picks up enough to make him understand that things 
went cross-grained in the court yesterday, and his friend 
is ruined. But the word "friend," and the word "ruin," 
disturb him no more than so much jargon. He is not to 
think of anything but how to get better. 

What a world of foreign cares are merged in that 
absorbing consideration ! 

He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is 
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his 
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock 
and key, for his own use only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him- 
self ; he yearneth over himself; his bowels are even melted 
within him, to think what he suffers ; he is not ashamed 
to weep over himself. 

He is for ever plotting how to do some good to him- 
self; studying little stratagems and artificial alleviations. 

He makes the most of himself; dividing himself, by 
an allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals as 
he hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he 
meditates — as of a thing apart from him — upon his poor 
aching head, and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, 
lay in it all the past night like a log, or palpable substance 
of pain, not to be removed without opening the very skull, 
as it seemed, to take it thence. Or he pities his long, 
clammy, attenuated fingers. He compassionates himself 



248 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

all over ; and his bed is a very discipline of Immanity, 
and tender heart. 

He is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively feels that 
none can so well perform that office for him. He cares 
for few spectators to his tragedy. Only that punctual 
face of the old nurse pleases him, that announces his 
broths and his cordials. He likes it because it is so un- 
moved, and because he can pour forth his feverish ejacu- 
lations before it as unreservedly as to his bed-post. 

To the world's business he is dead. He understands 
not what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; only 
he has a glimmering conceit of some such thing, when the 
doctor makes his daily call ; and even in the lines on that 
busy face he reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely 
conceives of himself as the sick man. To what other un- 
easy couch the good man is hastening, when he slips out 
of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur so carefully, 
for fear of rustling — is no speculation which he can at 
present entertain. He thinks only of the regular return 
of the same phenomenon at the same hoiu- to-morrow. 

Household rumours touch him not. Some faint mur- 
mur, indicative of life going on within the house, soothes 
him, while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not 
to know anything, not to think of anything. Servants 
gliding up or down the distant staircase, treading as upon 
velvet, gently keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles 
not himself further than with some feeble guess at their 
errands. Exacter knowledge would be a burthen to him : 
he can just endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens 
his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, 
and closes it again without asking "Who was it ?" He 
is flattered by a general notion that inquiries are making 
after him, but he cares not to know the name of the in- 
quirer. In the general stillness, and awful hush of the 
house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Com- 
pare the silent tread and quiet ministry, almost by the 
eye only, with which he is served — with the careless de- 



THE CONVALESCENT. 249 

meanottr, the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping 
of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same attend- 
ants, when he is getting a little better— and you will con- 
fess, that from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather 
call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a fall from 
dignity, amounting to a deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine 
stature ! Where is now the space, which he occupied so 
lately, in his own, in the family's eye 1 

The scene of his regalities, his sick room, which was 
his presence-chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic 
fancies — how is it reduced to a common bedroom ! The 
trimness of the very bed has something petty and un- 
meaning about it. It is made every day. How unlike 
to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic siuface, which it 
presented so short a time since, when to 7nal'e it was a 
service not to be thought of at oftener than three or four 
day revolutions, when the patient was with pain and grief 
to be lifted for a little while out of it, to submit to the 
encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and decencies which 
his shaken frame deprecated ; then to be lifted into it 
again, for another three or four days' respite, to flounder 
it out of shape again, while every fresh furrow was an 
historical record of some shifting posture, some uneasy 
turning, some seeking for a little ease ; and the shrunken 
skin scarce told a truer story than the crumpled coverlid. 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans — so 
much more awful, while we knew not from what caverns 
of vast hidden suffering they i3roceeded. The Lernean 
pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved ; 
and Philoctetes is become an ordinary personage. 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of great- 
ness survives in the still lingering visitations of the medi- 
cal attendant. But how is he, too, changed with every- 
thing else 1 Can this be he — this man of news — of chat 
— of anecdote — of everything but physic — can this be he, 
who so lately came between the patient and his cruel 
enemy, as on some solemn embassy from Natiu-e, erecting 



250 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

herself into a high mediating party 1 — Pshaw ! 'tis some 
old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous — 
the spell that hushed the household — the desert-like still- 
ness, felt throughout its inmost chambers — the mute 
attendance — the inquiry by looks — the still softer deli- 
cacies of self-attention — the sole and single eye of dis- 
temper alonely fixed upon itself — world-thoughts excluded 
— the man a world unto himself — his own theatre — 

What a speck is he dwindled into ! 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of 
sickness, yet far enough from the terra-firma of established 
health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting — 
an article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; but it is 
something hard — and the quibble, wretched as it was, 
relieved me. The summons, imseasonable as it appeared, 
seemed to link me on again to the petty businesses of 
life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle call to activity, 
however trivial; a wholesome weaning from that prepos- 
terous dream of self-absorption — the pufiy state of sick- 
ness—in which I confess to have lain so long, insensible 
to the magazines and monarchies of the world alike ; to 
its laws, and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus 
is subsiding ; the acres, which in imagination I had spread 
over — for the sick man swells in the sole contemplation 
of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to him- 
self— are wasting to a span ; and for the giant of self- 
importance, which I was so lately, you have me once 
again in my natural pretensions — the lean and meagre 
figure of your insignificant Essayist. 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 251 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 

So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or 
genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a necessary- 
alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, 
will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is im- 
possible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. 
The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here 
chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable 
balance of all the faculties. Madness is the dispropor- 
tionate straining or excess of any one of them. "So 
strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend, 

" did Nature to him frame, 

As all things but his judgment overcame ; 

His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 

Tempering that mighty sea below." 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in 
the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, 
to which they have no parallel in their own experience, 
besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and 
fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. 
But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not pos- 
sessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In the 
groves of Eden he walkg familiar as in his native paths. 
He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated. 
He treads the burning marl without dismay ; he wins his 
flight without self-loss through realms of chaos " and old 
night." Or if, abandoning himself to that severer chaos 
of a " human niind untuned," he is content awhile to be 
mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) 
with Timon, neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, 
so unchecked, but that, — never letting the reins of reason 
wholly go, while most he seems to do so, — he has his 
better genius still whispering at his ear, with the good 



252 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or witli the honest 
steward Flavins recommending kindlier resolutions. 
Where he seems most to recede from humanity, he will 
be found the truest to it. From beyond the scope of 
Nature if he summon possible existences, he subjugates 
them to the law of her consistency. He is beautifully 
loyal to that sovereign directress, even when he appears 
most to betray and desert her. His ideal tribes submit 
to policy ; his very monsters are tamed to his hand, even 
as that wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames, 
and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, 
till they wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced 
to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, 
are as true to the laws of their own nature (om-s with a 
difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein 
the great and the little wits are differenced ; that if the 
latter wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, 
they lose themselves and their readers. Their phantoms 
are lawless ; their visions nightmares. They do not create, 
which implies shaping and consistency. Their imagina- 
tions are not active — for to be active is to call something 
into act and form — ^but passive, as men in sick dreams. 
For the super-natural, or something super-added to what 
we know of nature, they give you the plainly non-natural. 
And if this were all, and that these mental hallucinations 
were discoverable only in the treatment of subjects out of 
nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with some 
plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wantonized : 
but even in the describing of real and every-day life, that 
which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall 
more deviate from nature — -show more of that inconse- 
quence, which has a natural alliance with frenzy, — than 
a great genius in his " maddest fits," as Wither some- 
where calls them. We appeal to any one that is acquainted 
with the common nm of Lane's novels, — as they existed 
some twenty or thirty years back, — those scanty intel- 
lectual viands of the whole female reading public, till a 
hai^pier genius arose, and expelled for ever the inmitritious 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 253 

phantoms, — whether he has not found his brain more " be- 
tossed," his memory more puzzled, his sense of when and 
where more confounded, among the improbable events, the 
incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no char- 
acters, of some third-rate love-intrigue — where the persons 
shall be a Lord Glendamom* and a Miss Rivers, and the 
scene only alternate between Bath and Bond Street — a 
more "bewildering dreaminess induced upon him than he has 
felt wandering over all the fairy-grounds of Spenser. In 
the productions we refer to, nothing but names and places 
is familiar ; the persons are neither of this world nor of any 
other conceivable one ; an endless stream of activities 
without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive : — we 
meet phantoms in our known walks ; fantasqiies only 
christened. In the poet we have names which announce 
fiction ; and we have absolutely no place at all, for the 
things and persons of the Fairy Queen prate not of their 
"whereabout." But in their inner natiu-e, and the law of 
their speech and actions, we are at home, and upon ac- 
quainted ground. The one turns life into a dream ; the 
other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every- 
day occurrences. By what subtle art of tracing the mental 
processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to 
explain, but in that wonderful episode of the cave of 
Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the 
lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and 
becomes the god of all the treasures of the world; and 
has a daughter, Ambition, before whom all the world 
kneels for favours — with the Hesperian fruit, the waters 
of Tantalus, with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but 
not impertinently, in the same stream — that we should 
be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of trea- 
sures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and 
yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations of the 
most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time 
awake, and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy, 
— is a proof of that hidden sanity which still guides the 
poet in the wildest seeming-aberrations. 



254 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a 
copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some sort 
— but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of us, that 
has been entertained all night with the spectacle of some 
wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the morning, 
and try it by his waking judgment. That which appeared 
so shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty was 
passive, when it comes under cool examination shall appear 
so reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to 
have been so deluded ; and to have taken, though but in 
sleep, a monster for a god. But the transitions in this 
episode are every whit as violent as in the most extrava- 
gant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 

Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, I ob- 
serve with concern "At his cottage on the Bath Road, 
Captain Jackson." The name and attribution are com- 
mon enough; but a feeling like reproach persuades me 
that this could have been no other in fact than my dear 
old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago rented a 
tenement, which he was pleased to dignify with the 
appellation here used, about a mile from Westbourn 
Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they 
do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the 
surprise of some such sad memento as that which now 
lies before us ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a 
wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained 
with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that 
slender professional allowance. Comely girls they were, 
too. 

And was I in danger of forgetting this man? — his 
cheerful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first 
you set your foot in the cottage — the anxious ministerings 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 255 

about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be 
ministered. — Althea's horn in a poor platter — the power 
of self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes 
to entertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties. 

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a 
bare scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — remnant 
hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door con- 
tented. But in the copious will — the revelling imagina- 
tion of your host — the " mind, the mind. Master Shallow," 
whole beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — no end 
appeared to the profusion. 

It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; 
carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it— the 
stamina were left — the elemental bones still flourished, 
divested of its accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open- 
handed creature exclaim ; " while we have, let us not 
want," "here is plenty left ;" " want for nothing " — with 
many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, 
and old concomitants of smoking boards and feast -op- 
pressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single 
Grloucester upon his wife's plate, or the daughters', he 
would convey the remanent rind into his own, with a 
merry quirk of " the nearer the bone," etc., and declaring 
that he universally preferred the outside. For we had 
our table distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in 
a manner sate above the salt. None but his guest or 
guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the 
fragments were ver^ hosjntibus sacra. But of one thing 
or another there was always enough, and leavings : only 
he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show 
that he wished no savings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occa- 
sions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some 
thin kind of ale I remember — "British beverage," he 
would say! "Push about, my boys;" "Drink to your 
sweethearts, girls." At every meagre draught a toast 
must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were 



256 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, 
and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was 
foaming in the centre, with beams of generous Port or 
Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corners. 
You got flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy upon 
words ; and reeled under the potency of his unperforming 
Bacchanalian encouragements. 

We had our songs — " Why, Soldiers, why," — and the 
" British Grenadiers " — in which last we were all obliged 
to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their pro- 
ficiency was a nightly theme — the masters he had given 
them — the " no-expense " which he spared to accomplish 
them in a science " so necessary to young women." But 
then— they could not sing " without the instrument." 

Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets of 
Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims at gran- 
deur, your makeshift efforts of magnificence 1 Sleep, 
sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be 
extant ; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs ; dear, 
cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa ! Without mention of 
mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner 
warble ! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face 
of the well -deluded father, who now haply listening to 
cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when 
she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive to the 
twitterings of that slender image of a voice. 

We were not without our literary talk either. It did 
not extend far, but as far as it went it was good. It was 
bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon. In the 
cottage was a room, which tradition authenticated to have 
been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retire- 
ments, had penned the greater part of his Leonidas. This 
circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of the 
present inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to 
have met with the poem in question. But that was no 
matter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was 
pressed into the account of the family importance. It 
diffused a learned air through the apartment, the little 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 257 

side casement of which (the poet's study window), open- 
ing upon a superb view as far as the pretty spire of 
Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood 
nor square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet 
gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity 
shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a 
glowing summer evening. It was all his, he took it all 
in, and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. It 
was a part of his largess, his hospitality; it was going over 
his grounds ; he was lord for the time of showing them, 
and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes — 
you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say, 
" Hand me the silver sugar-tongs ;" and before you could 
discover it was a single spoon, and that 'plated^ he would 
disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of 
" the urn " for a tea-kettle ; or by calling a homely bench 
a sofa. liicli men direct you to their furnitm-e, poor 
ones divert you from it ; he neither did one nor the other, 
but by simply assuming that everything was handsome 
about him, you were positively at a demur what you did, 
or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live on, 
he seemed to live on everything. He had a stock of 
wealth in his mind ; not that which is properly termed 
Content, for in truth he was not to be contained at all, 
but overflowed all bounds by the force of a magnificent 
self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober 
native of North Britain, who generally saw things more 
as they were, was not proof against the continual collision 
of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and dis- 
creet young women ; in the main, perhaps, not insensible 
to their true circumstances. I have seen them assiune a 
thoughtful air at times. But such was the preponderat- 
ing opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded not for 
any half hour together did they ever look their own 
prospects fairly in the face. There was no resisting the 
vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination 
S 



258 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which 
kept them up in the eye of the world too, and seem 'at 
last to have realized themselves ; for they both have 
married since, I am told, more than respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some 
subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the 
manner in which the pleasant creature described the cir- 
cumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly remember 
something of a chaise-and-fom-, in which he made his 
entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride 
home, or cany her thither, I forget which. It so com- 
pletely made out the stanza of the old ballad — 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his own 
actual splendour at all corresponded with the world's 
notions on that subject. In homely cart, or travelling 
caravan, by whatever humble vehicle they chanced to be 
transported in less prosperous days, the ride through Glas- 
gow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating con- 
trast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's 
state. It seemed an " equipage etern " from which no 
power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power there- 
after to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon 
indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the 
sense of them before strangers, may not be always dis- 
commendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, 
have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a 
man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil 
at home ; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy 
himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of 
constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, 
which was reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 259 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas. ViEGlL. 

• A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefb. 

If peradventiire, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the 
golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irk- 
some confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days 
prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and 
silver hairs, without hope of release or respite ; to have 
lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or 
to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood ; 
then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my 
deliverance. 

It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at 
the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transi- 
tion at fourteen from the abimdant playtime, and the 
frequently -intervening vacations of school days, to the 
eight, nine, and sometimes ten hoiu-s' a-day attendance at 
the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to 
anything. I gradually became content — doggedly con- 
tented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, 
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes 
of worship, are for that very reason the very worst 
adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In 
particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a 
city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful 
cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers — the 
buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal 
bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, 
pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks 
and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of 
tradesmen, which make a weekday saunter through the 



260 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful — are shut 
out. "No book-stalls deliciously to idle over — no btsy 
faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them 
ever passing by — the very face of business a charm by 
contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to 
be seen but unhappy countenances — or half-happy at best 
— of emancipated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with 
here and there a servant-maid that has got leave to go 
out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost 
almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily 
expressing the hoUowness of a day's pleasuring. The 
very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but 
comfortable. 

But besides Sundays, I had a day at Easter, and a 
day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go 
and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. 
This last was a great indidgence ; and the prospect of its 
recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, 
and made my durance tolerable. But when the week 
came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance 
keep touch with me, or rather was it not a series of 
seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasiu-e, 
and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the 
most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised 
rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I 
was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tediovis 
weeks that must intervene before such another snatch 
woidd come. Still the prospect of its coming threw 
something of an illumination upon the darker side of my 
captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely 
have sustained my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigom-s of attendance, I have ever 
been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of 
incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, 
had increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all 
the lines of my countenance. My health and my good 
spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some 
crisis, to which I should be found unequal. Besides 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 261 

my daylight servitude, I served over again all night 
in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary 
false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I 
was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation 
presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were ; 
and the wood had entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the oifice would sometimes rally me 
upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did 
not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my 
employers, when, on the fifth of last month, a day ever 

to be remembered by me, L , the junior partner in 

the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with 
my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. 
So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, 
and added that I was afraid I should eventually be 
obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of 
course to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A 
whole week I remained labouring under the impression 
that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure ; that I 
had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been 
anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this 
manner — the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my 
whole life — when on the evening of the 12th of April, 
just as I was about quitting my desk to go home (it 
might be about eight o'clock), I received an awful sum- 
mons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm 
in the formidable back parlour. I thought now my time 
is surely come, I have done for myself, I am going to be 

told that they have no longer occasion for me. L , 

I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was 
a little relief to me, — when to my utter astonishment 

B , the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to 

me on the length of my services, my very meritorious 
conduct during the whole of the time (the deuce, thought 
I, how did he find out that 1 I protest I never had the 
confidence to think as much). He went on to descant 
on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life, 
(how my heart panted !) and asking me a few questions as 



262 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to the amount of my own property, of whicli I have a little, 
ended with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded 
a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, 
which I had served so well, a pension for life to the 
amoimt of two-thirds of my accustomed salary — a mag- 
nificent offer ! I do not know what I answered between 
surprise and gratitude, but it was understood that I ac- 
cepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free 
from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out 
a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home 
— for ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to 
conceal their names — I owe to the kindness of the most 
munificent firm in the world — the house of Boldero, 
Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. 

Esto perpetua ! 

For the first day or two I felt stunned — overwhelmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused 
to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was 
happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the con- 
dition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose 
after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust 
myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time 
into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to 
have all his Time to himself It seemed to me that I had 
more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From 
a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a 
vast revenue ; I could see no end of my possessions ; I 
wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff", to manage my 
estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons 
grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weigh- 
ing their own resources, to forego their customary employ- 
ment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel 
it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient ; 
and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I 
have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my con- 
dition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am 
as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 263 

could walk it away ; but I do not walk all day long, as I 
used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a 
day, to make the most of them. If Time were trouble- 
some, I could read it away ; but I do not read in that 
violent measure, with which, having no Time my own 
but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and 
eyesight in bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble 
(as bow) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt 
after pleasure ; I let it come to me. I am like the 
man 

that's born, and has his years come to him, 



In some green desert. 

" Years ! " you will say ; " what is this superannuated 
simpleton calculating upon 1 He has already told us he 
is past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but dedvict 
out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, 
and not to myself, and you will find me still a young 
fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man 
can properly call his own — that which he has all to him- 
self; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to 
live it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of 
my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me 
threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be 
as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three 
sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the 
commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces 
are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had 
intervened since I quitted the Counting House. I could 
not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, 
and the clerks with whom I had for so many years, and 
for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely 
associated — being suddenly removed from them — they 
seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which 
may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir 
Kobert Howard, speaking of a friend's death : — 



264 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A, 

'Twas but just now he ■went away ; 

I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to 
go among them once or twice since; to visit my old desk- 
fellows — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left 
below in the state mUitant. Not all the kindness with 
which they received me conld quite restore to me that 
pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed 
among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but 
methought they went off but faintly. My old desk; the 
peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. 
I knew it must be, but I coidd not take it kindly. 

D 1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, 

if I had not — at quitting my old compeers, the faithful 
partners of my toils for six-and-thirty years, that soothed 
for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness 
of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then, 
after all 1 or was I a coward simply 1 Well, it is too 
late to repent ; and I also know that these suggestions 
are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. 
But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the 
bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I 
shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the 
separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for 
again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your 

leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! 

Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI- , 

officious to do, and to volunteer, good services! — and 
thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a 
Whittington of old, stately house of Merchants ; with 
thy labyrinthine passages, and light -excluding, pent-up 
offices, where candles for one-half the year supplied the 
place of the sun's light; unhealthy contributor to my 
weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee 
remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wander- 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 265 

ing bookseller, my " works ! " There let them rest, as I 
do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more 
MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful ! 
My mantle I bequeath among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first com- 
munication. At that period I was approaching to tran- 
quillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm 
indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the 
first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the 
dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed 
my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some 
necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, 
from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some re- 
volution returned upon the world. I am now as if I 
had never been other than my own master. It is 
na.tural for me to go where I please, to do what I 
please. I find myself at 11 o'clock in the day in Bond 
Street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering 
there at that very hour for years past. I digress 
into Soho, to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been 
thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor 
new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the 
morning. Was it ever otherwise 1 What is become of 
Fish Street Hill 1 Where is Fenchurch Street 1 Stones 
of old Mincing Lane, which I have worn with my daily 
pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of 
what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now 
vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 
'Change time, and I am strangely among the Elgin 
marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ventured to com- 
pare the change in my condition to passing into another 
world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I have 
lost all distinction of season. I do not know the day of 
the week or of the month. Each day used to be indi- 
vidually felt by me in its reference io the foreign post 
days ; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next 
Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday 
nights' sensations. The genius of each day was upon me 



266 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, 
spirits, etc. The phantom of the next day, with the 
dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath 
recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white 1 
What is gone of Black Monday 1 All days are the same. 
Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a holiday, as 
it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitive- 
ness, and over -care to get the greatest quantity of 
pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week-day. I 
can spare to go to church now, without grudging the 
huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holi- 
day. I have time for everything. I can visit a sick 
friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation 
when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invi- 
tation to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this 
fine May -morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold 
the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, 
carking and caring ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in 
the same eternal round — and what is it all for? A man 
can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little 
to do. Had I a little son, I woidd christen him 
NoTHiNG-TO-DO ; he should do nothing. Man, I verily 
believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. 
I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will no 
kindly earthquake come and swallow up those accursed 
cotton-mills ? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and 
bowl it down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer ****** clerk to the Firm of, etc. 
I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim 
gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant 
face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, 
nor with any settled purpose. I walk about ; not to and 
from. They tell me, a certain c^im dignitate air, that 
has been buried so long with my other good parts, has 
begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility 
perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 267 

the state of the opera. Ojous ojoeratum est. I have done 
all that I came into this world to do. I have worked 
task-work, and have the rest of the day to myself. 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 

It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury and 
Sir William Temple are models of the genteel style in 
writing. We should prefer saying — of the lordly, and 
the gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, than the 
inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury and the plain 
natural chit-chat of Temple. The man of rank is dis- 
cernible in both writers ; but in the one it is only insinu- 
ated gracefully, in the other it stands out off"ensively. 
The peer seems to have written with his coronet on, and 
his Earl's mantle before him ; the commoner in his 
elbow-chair and undress. — What can be more pleasant 
than the way in which the retired statesman peeps out 
in his essays, penned by the latter in his delightful 
retreat at Shene 1 They scent of Nimeguen and the 
Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambas- 
sador. Don Francisco de Melo, a " Portugal Envoy in 
England," tells him it was frequent in his country for 
men, spent with age and other decays, so as they could 
not hope for above a year or two of life, to ship them- 
selves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival there 
to go on a great length, sometimes of twenty or thirty 
years, or more, by the force of that vigour they recovered 
with that remove. " Whether such an effect (Temple 
beautifully adds) might grow from the air, or the fruits 
of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, which 
is the fountain of light and heat, when their natural 
heat was so far decayed; or whether the piecing out of 
an old man's life were worth the pains ; I cannot tell : 
perhaps the play is not worth the candle." Monsieur 



268 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Pompone, " French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) 
time at the Hague," certifies him, that in his life he 
had never heard of any man in France that arrived at a 
hundred years of age ; a limitation of life which the old 
gentleman imputes to the excellence of their climate, 
giving them such a liveliness of temper and humour, as 
disposes them to more pleasures of all kinds than in other 
countries ; and moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. 
The " late Robert Earl of Leicester " furnishes him with 
a story of a Countess of Desmond, married out of Eng- 
land in Edward the Fourth's time, and who lived far in 
King James's reign. The " same noble person " gives 
him an account, how such a year, in the same reign, there 
Went about the country a set of morrice-dancers, com- 
posed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian, and a 
tabor and pipe ; and how these twelve, one with another, 
made up twelve hundred years. " It was not so much 
(says Temple) that so many in one small county (Hert- 
fordshire) should live to that age, as that they should be 
in vigour and in humour to travel and to dance." Mon- 
sieur Zulichem, one of his " colleagues at the Hague," 
informs him of a cure for the gout ; which is confirmed 
by another " Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that 
town, who had tried it. — Old Prince Maurice of Nassau 
recommends to him the use of hammocks in that com- 
plaint ; having been allured to sleep, while suffering 
under it himself, by the " constant motion or swinging 
of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and the Ehinegrave 
who " was killed last simimer before Maestricht," impart 
to him their experiences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more innocently 
disclosed, than where he takes for granted the compli- 
ments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste 
and perfection of what we esteem the best, he can truly 
say, that the French, who have eaten his peaches and 
grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have generally con- 
cluded that the last are as good as any they have eaten 
in France on this side Fontainebleau ; and the first as 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 269 

good as any they have eat in Gascony. Italians have 
agreed his white figs to be as good as any of that sort in 
Italy, which is the earlier kind of white fig there 3 for in 
the latter kind and the blue, we cannot come near the 
warm climates, no more than in the Frontignac or Muscat 
grape. His orange-trees, too, are as large as any he saw 
when he was young in France, except those of Fontaine- 
bleau; or what he had seen since in the Low Countries, 
except some very old ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of 
grapes he had the honour of bringing over four sorts into 
England, which he enumerates, and supposes that they 
are all by this time pretty common among some gardeners 
in his neighbourhood, as well as several persons of 
quality; for he ever thought all things of this kind "the 
commoner they are made the better." The garden 
pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose 
to plant any of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, 
hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the 
farthest northwards; and praises the "Bishop of Munster 
at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in 
that cold climate ; is equally pleasant and in character. 
"I may perhaps" (he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay 
with a passage worthy of Cowley) " be allowed to know 
something of this trade, since I have so long allowed 
myself to be good for nothing else, which few men will 
do, or enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad 
to see how other matters play, what motions in the state, 
and what invitations they may hope for into other scenes. 
For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it 
more particularly, were the inclination of my youth 
itself, so they are the pleasures of my age ; and I can 
truly say that, among many great employments that have 
fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any 
of them, Ibut have often endeavoured to escape from 
them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where 
a man may go his own way and his own pace in the 
common paths and circles of life. The measure of choos- 
ing well is whether a man likes what he has chosen. 



270 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

which, I thank God, has befallen me ; and though among 
the follies of my life, building and planting have not been 
the least, and have cost me more than I have the confi- 
dence to own ; yet they have been fully recompensed by 
the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, 
since my resolution taken of never entering again into 
any public employments, I have passed five years without 
ever once going to town, though I am almost in sight of 
it, and have a house there always ready to receive me. 
Nor has this been any sort of aff'ectation, as some have 
thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make 
so small a remove ; for when I am in this corner I can 
truly say with Horace, Me quoties reficit, etc. 

' Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives, 
What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
May I have books enough ; and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.' " 

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy 
copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was 
mostly subordinate to natm-e and tenderness, has seduced 
him into a string of felicitous antitheses ; which, it is 
obvious to remark, have been a model to Addison and 
succeeding essayists. " Who would not be covetous, and 
with reason," he says, "if health could be purchased 
with gold 1 who not ambitious, if it were at the command 
of power, or restored by honour 1 but, alas ! a white staff 
will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common 
cane ; nor a blue ribband bind up a wound so well as a 
fillet. The glitter of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt 
sore eyes instead of curing them ; and an aching head 
will be no more eased by wearing a crown than a common 
nightcap." In a far better style, and more accordant 
with his own humour of plainness, are the concluding 
sentences of his " Discourse upon Poetry." Temple 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 271 

took a part in the controversy about the ancient and the 
modern learning ; and, with that partiality so natural 
and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements 
had left him little leism-e to look into modern produc- 
tions, while his retirement gave him occasion to look back 
upon the classic studies of his youth — decided in favour 
of the latter. " Certain it is," he says, " that, wliether 
the fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of their 
perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal 
mixture of tlie modern languages would not bear it — the 
great heights and excellency both of poetry and music 
fell with the Roman learning and empire, and have never 
since recovered the admiration and applauses that before 
attended tlaem. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they 
must be confessed to be the softest and the sweetest, the 
most general and most innocent amusements of common 
time and life. They still find room in the courts of 
princes, and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to 
revive and animate the dead calm of poor and idle lives, 
and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturba- 
tions of the greatest and the busiest men. And both 
these efiects are of equal use to human life ; for the mind 
of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the 
beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is 
so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and 
so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or 
affections. I know very well that many who pretend to 
be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise 
both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too light for 
the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever 
find themselves wholly insensible to their charms, would, 
I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of 
reproaching their own temper, and bringing the goodness 
of their natures, if not of their understandings, into 
question. While this world lasts, I doubt not but the 
pleasure and request of these two entertainments will do 
so too; and happy those that content themselves with 
these, or any other so easy and so innocent, and do not 



272 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be 
quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them." " When 
all is done (he concludes), human life is at the greatest 
and the best but like a froward child, that must be 
played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, tUl 
it falls asleep, and then the care is over." 



BARBARA S- 



On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I for- 
get which it was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara 

S , with her accustomed punctuality, ascended the 

long rambling staircase, with awkward interposed landing- 
places, which led to the office, or rather a sort of box with 
a desk in it, whereat sat the then treasurer of (what few 
of our readers may remember) the old Bath Theatre. 
All over the island it was the custom, and remains so I 
believe to this day, for the players to receive their weekly 
stipend on the Saturday. It was not much that Barbara 
had to claim. 

The little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; 
but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to 
her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her 
pious application of her small earnings, had given an air 
of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You 
would have taken her to have been at least five years 
older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, 
or where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But 
the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her 
above her age, had for some few months past intrusted to 
her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the 
self-consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had al- 
ready drawn tears in young Arthur ; had rallied Richard 
with infantine petulance in the Duke of York ; and in her 



BARBARA S -. 273 

turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of 
Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's 
pathetic afterpiece to the life ; but as yet the " Children 
in the Wood" was not. 

Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, 
I have seen some of these small parts, each making two 
or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of 
the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more 
carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the 
establishment. But such as they were, blotted and 
scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them all ; and in 
the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful sight 
to behold them bound up in costliest morocco, each single 
—each small part making a hook — with fine clasps, gilt- 
splashed, etc. She had conscientiously kept them as they 
had been delivered to her ; not a blot had been effaced or 
tampered with. They were precious to her for their 
affecting remembrancings. They were her principia, her 
rudiments ; the elementary atoms ; the little steps by 
which she pressed forward to perfection. " What," she 
would say, " could India-rubber, or a pumice-stone, have 
done for these darlings'?" 

I am in no hiu-ry to begin my story — indeed, I have 
little or none to tell — so I will just mention an observa- 
tion of hers connected with that interesting time. 

Not long before she died I had been discoiu-sing with 
her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great 
tragic performer experiences during acting. I ventured 
to think, that though in the first instance such players 
must have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully 
called up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feel- 
ings must become deadened in great measure, and the 
performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather 
than express a present one. She indignantly repelled the 
notion, that with a truly great tragedian the operation, 
by which such effects were produced upon an audience, 
could ever degrade itself into what was purely mechanical. 
With much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her self-ex- 
T 



274 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

perience, slie told me, that so long ago as when she used 
to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella 
(I think it was), when that impressive actress has been 
bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she has 
felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which (to use 
her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded her back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but 
it was some great actress of that day. The name is in- 
different ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most dis- 
tinctly remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, and am 
not sure that an impediment in my speech (which cer- 
tainly kept me out of the pulpit), even more than certain 
personal disqualifications, which are often got over in that 
profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from 
adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it) 
once to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. 
I have played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have 
chatted with ever good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. 
I have conversed as friend to friend with her accomplished 
husband. I have been indulged with a classical confer- 
ence with Macready ; and with a sight of the Player- 
picture gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the kind owner, 
to remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he 
loves so much), went over it with me, supplying to his 
capital collection, what alone the artist could not give 
them — voice ; and their living motion. Old tones, half- 
faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived 
again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin he could not 

restore to me. I have supped with ; but I am 

growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say — at the desk of the then trea- 
surer of the old Bath Theatre— not Diamond's — presented 
herself the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circum- 
stances. The father had practised, I believe, as an 
apothecary in the town. But his practice, from causes 
which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to 



BARBARA S . 275 

arraign — or perhaps from that pure infelicity which accom- 
panies some people in their walk through life, and which 
it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence — was 
now reduced to nothing. They were, in fact, in the very 
teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew and 
respected them in better days, took the little Barbara into 
his company. 

Af the period I commenced with, her slender earnings 
were the sole support of the family, including two younger 
sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying cir- 
cumstances. Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance 
was the only chance of a Sunday's (generally theii' only) 
meal of meat. 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's 
part, where in her theatrical character she was to sup off 
a roast fowl (0 joy to Barbara !) some comic actor, who 
was for the night caterer for this dainty^ — in the mis- 
guided humour of his part, threw over the dish such a 
quantity of salt (0 grief and pain of heart to Barbara !) 
that when he crammed a portion of it into her mouth, 
she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and what with 
shame of her ill-acted part, and pain of real appetite at 
missing such a dainty, her little heart sobbed almost to 
breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed spec- 
tators were totally unable to comprehend, mercifully 
relieved her. 

This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who 
stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Satur- 
day's payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old thea- 
trical people besides herself say, of all men least calculated 
for a treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away 
at random, kept scarce any books, and summing up at 
the week's end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, 
blest himself that it was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half-guinea. 
— By mistake he popped into her hand — a whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 



276 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake ; 
God knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those un- 
couth landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual 
weight of metal pressing in her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child. From her parents 
and those about her, she had imbibed no contrary influ- 
ence. But then they had taught her nothing. Poor 
men's smoky cabins are not always porticoes of moral 
philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to evil, but 
then she might be said to have no fixed principle. She 
had heard honesty commended, but never dreamed of its 
application to herself She thought of it as something 
which concerned grown-up people, men and women. She 
had never known temptation, or thought of preparing 
resistance against it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, 
and explain to him his blunder. He was already so con- 
fused with age, besides a natural want of punctuality, 
that she would have had some difficulty in making him 
understand it. She saw that in an instant. And then 
it was such a bit of money ! and then the image of a 
larger allowance of butcher's meat on their table the next 
day came across her, tUl her little eyes glistened, and her 
mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always 
been so good-natured, had stood her friend behind the 
scenes, and even recommended her promotion to some of 
her little parts. But again the old man was reputed to 
be worth a world of money. He was supposed to have 
fifty pounds a-year clear of the theatre. And then came 
staring upon her the figures of her little stockingless and 
shoeless sisters. And when she looked at her own neat 
white cotton stockings, which her sitiiation at the theatre 
had made it indispensable for her mother to provide for 
her, with hard straining and pinching from the family 
stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover their 
poor feet with the same — and how then they could ac- 



BARBARA S . 277 

company her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been 
precluded from doing, by reason of their unfashionable 
attire, — in these thoughts she reached the second landing- 
place — the second, I mean, from the top — for there was 
still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never-failing friend did step in — for at that 
moment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, 
was revealed to her — a reason above reasoning — and with- 
out her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her 
feet to move), she found herself transported back to the 
individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the 
old hand of Eavenscroft, who in silence took back the 
refunded treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) 
insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were 
anxious ages, and from that moment a deep peace fell 
upon her heart, and she knew the quality of honesty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to her profes- 
sion brightened up the feet and the prospects of her little 
sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and 
released her from the diflBculty of discussing moral dogmas 
upon a landing-place. 

I have heard her say that it was a sm'prise, not much 
short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with 
which the old man pocketed the difference, which had 
caused her such mortal throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from 
the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,^ then sixty-seven 
years of age (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles 
upon this childish occasion I have sometimes ventured to 
think her indebted for that power of rending the heart in 
the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in 
after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all 
so in the part of Lady Kandolph) even to Mrs. Siddons, 

^ The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, 
by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. 
She was Mrs. Crawford, a third time a ^vidow, when I knew her. 



278 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 

IN A LETTER TO K S , ESQ. 

Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of dis- 
cipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that 
church which you have so worthily historified, yet may 
the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled heart 
or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter her 
beautiful and time -hallowed Edifices. Judge, then, of 
my mortification when, after attending the choral anthems 
of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of 
renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the 
tombs and antiquities there, I found myself excluded; 
turned out, like a dog, or some profane person, into the 
common street, with feelings not very congenial to the 
place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening 
to. It was a jar after that music. 

You had your education at Westminster ; and doubtless 
among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have 
gathered much of that devotional feeling in those yoimg 
years, on which your purest mind feeds still — and may it 
feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and grace- 
fully blending ever with the religious, may have been 
sown in you among those wrecks of splendid mortality. 
You owe it to the place of your education ; you owe it to 
your learned fondness for the architecture of your an- 
cestors ; you owe it to the venerableness of your ecclesi- 
astical establishment, which is daily lessened and called 
in question through these practices — to speak aloud your 
sense of them ; never to desist raising your voice against 
them, till they be totally done away with and abolished ; 
till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed 
against the decent, though low -in -purse, enthusiast, or 
blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 279 

his family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare 
admission within its walls. You owe it to the decencies 
which you wish to see maintained in its impressive services, 
that our cathedral be no longer an object of inspection to 
the poor at those times only, in which they must rob from 
their attendance on the worship every minute which they 
can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public prints 
have taken up this subject, — in vain such poor, nameless 
writers as myself express their indignation. A word from 
you, sir, — a hint in yom- Journal — would be sufficient to 
fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we 
can remember them when we were boys. At that time 
of life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) 
in both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to so much 
reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so much 
silver ! — If we had scraped it up to gain an occasional 
admission (as we certainly should have done), would the 
sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us 
(while we have been weighing anxiously prudence against 
sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those of the 
adjacent park ; when we could walk in at any time, as 
the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as that 
lasted 1 Is the being shown over a place the same as 
silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it 1 In no 
part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance 
(out of service-time) under the stun of two shillings. The 
rich and the great will smile at the anti-climax, presiimed 
to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, 
sir, how much quiet worth, how much capacity for en- 
larged feeling, how much taste and genius, may coexist, 
especially in youth, with a purse incompetent to this de- 
mand. A respected friend of ours, during his late visit to 
the metropolis, presented himself for admission to St. 
Paul's. At the same time a decently-clothed man, with 
as decent a wife and child, were bargaining for the same 
indulgence. The price was only two-pence each person. 
The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but 
there were three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. 



280 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. 
Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was his object. But 
in the state of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably 
seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy of the country (no 
man can do it more impressively) ; instruct them of what 
value these insignificant pieces of money, these minims 
to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame 
these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions 
of your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscri- 
minate admission would expose the Tombs to violation. 
Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of 
a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all 1 Do the 
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such 
speculations ? It is all that you can do to drive them 
into your churches ; they do not voluntarily offer them- 
selves. They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; for 
tomb of king or prelate, sage, or poet. If they had, they 
would be no longer the rabble. 

For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only 
well -attested charge of violation adduced has been — a 
ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of 
that amiable spy. Major Andrd. And is it for this — the 
wanton mischief of some school-boy, fired perhaps with 
raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom — or the remote 
possibility of such a mischief occurring again, so easUy to 
be prevented by stationing a constable within the walls, 
if the vergers are incompetent to the duty — is it upon 
such wretched pretences that the people of England are 
made to pay a new Peter's Pence, so long abrogated ; or 
must content themselves with contemplating the ragged 
Exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done 
about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you 
know anything about the unfortunate relic ? — 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 281 



AMICUS EEDIVIVUS. 

Wliere were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 

I DO"not know when I have experienced a stranger sen- 
sation than on seeing my old friend, G-. D., who had been 
paying me a morning visit, a few Sundays back, at my 
cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of turning 
down the right-hand path by which he had entered — 
with staff in hand, and at noonday, deliberately march 
right forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by 
us, and totally disappear. 

A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling 
enough ; but in the broad, open daylight, to witness such 
an unreserved motion towards self-destruction in a valued 
friend, took from me all power of speculation. 

How I found my feet I know not. Consciousness was 
quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the 
spot. I remember nothing but the silvery apparition of 
a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff (the 
hand unseen that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling 
for the skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) 
he was on my shoulders, and I — freighted with a load 
more precious than his who bore Anchises. 

And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal 
of simdry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a little too late 
to participate in the honours of the rescue, in philan- 
thropic shoals came thronging to communicate their 
advice as to the recovery ; prescribing variously the 
application, or non-application, of salt, etc., to the person 
of the patient. Life, meantime, was ebbing fast away, 
amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, 
more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, pro- 
posed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, 
and impossible, as one should think, to be missed on, — 



282 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

shall I confess 1 — in this emergency it was to me as if an 
Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions — and mine 
had not been inconsiderable — -are commonly followed by a 
debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution. 
MoNOCULUS — for so, in default of catching his true 
name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman who 
now appeared — is a grave, middle-aged person, who, 
without having studied at the college, or truckled to the 
pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of 
his valuable time in experimental processes upon the 
bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital 
spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct and 
lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his 
services, from a case of common surfeit suffocation to the 
ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful 
application of the plant cannabis outwardly. But though 
he declineth not altogether these drier extinctions, his 
occupation tendeth, for the most j)art, to water-practice ; 
for the convenience of which, he hath judiciously fixed 
his quarters near the grand repository of the stream 
mentioned, where day and night, from his little watch- 
tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect 
the wrecks of drowned mortality — partly, as he saith, to 
be upon the spot — and partly, because the liquids which 
he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these 
distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to 
be found at these common hostelries than in the shops 
and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to 
such finesse by practice, that it is reported he can dis- 
tinguish a plunge, at half a fmiong distance ; and can 
tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, 
suspended over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but 
which, by time and frequency of nightly divings, has 
been dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth 
by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting 
his left eye. His remedy — after a sufiicient application 
of warm blankets, friction, etc., is a simple tumbler, or 
more, of the pm-est Cognac, with water, made as hot as 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 283 

the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in 
the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he con- 
descendeth to be the taster ; and showeth, by his own 
example, the innocuous nature of the prescription. No- 
thing can be more kind or encouraging than this pro- 
cediu'e. It addeth confidence to the patient, to see his 
medical adviser go hand in hand with himself in the 
remSdy. When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, 
what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the 
potion 1 In fine, Monoculus is a humane, sensible man, 
who, for a slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, 
is content to wear it out in the endeavoiu: to save the 
lives of others — his pretensions so moderate, that with 
difficulty I could press a crown upon him, for the price of 
restoring the existence of such an invaluable creature to 
society as G. D. 

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding 
alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed 
to have given a shake to memory, calling up notice after 
notice, of all the providential deliverances he had ex- 
perienced in the coiu'se of his long and innocent life. 
Sitting up on my couch — my couch which, naked and 
void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which 
it administered, shall be honoured with costly valance, 
at some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook, 
— he discoursed of marvellous escapes — by carelessness 
of nurses — by pails of gelid, and kettles of the boiling 
element, in infancy — by orchard pranks, and snapping 
twigs, in schoolboy frolics — by descent of tiles at Tnimp- 
ington, and of heavier tomes at Pembroke — by studious 
watchings, inducing frightful vigilance — by want, and 
the fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of the 
learned head. — Anon, he would biu'st out into little frag- 
ments of chanting — of songs long ago — ends of deliver- 
ance h3rmns, not remembered before since childhood, but 
coming up now, when his heart was made tender as a 
child's — for the tremor cordis, in the retrospect of a 
recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, 



284 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

acting upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tender- 
ness, which we should do ill to christen cowardice ; and 
Shakspeare, in the latter crisis, has made his good Sir 
Hugh to remember the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter 
of shallow rivers. 

Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark you 
were like to have extinguished for ever ! Your salubrious 
streams to this City, for now near two centuries, would 
hardly have atoned for what you were in a moment wash- 
ing away. Mockery of a river — liquid artifice — wretched 
condiut ! henceforth rank with canals and sluggish aque- 
ducts. "Was it for this that, smit in boyhood with the 
explorations of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the 
vales of Amwell to explore your tributary springs, to 
trace your salutary waters sparkling through green Hert- 
fordshire, and cultured Enfield parks 1 — Ye have no swans 
— no Naiads — no river God — or did the benevolent hoary 
aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also 
might have the tutelary genius of your waters 1 

Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have been 
some consonancy in it ; but what willows had ye to wave 
and rustle over his moist sepulture 1 — or, having no name, 
besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did 
ye think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to 
be termed the Stream Dyeeian ? 

And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 

I protest, George, you shall not venture out again — 
no, not by daylight — without a sufficient pair of spectacles 
— in your musing moods especially. Your absence of 
mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to 
be called in question by it. You shall not go wandering 
into Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, man, 
to turn dipper at your years, after your many tracts in 
favour of sprinkling only ! 

I have nothing but water in my head o'nights since 
this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 285 

in his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning 
to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that 
is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; the billows go over 
my head, all the waves go over me. Selah." Then I 
have before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. 
I cry out too late to save. Next follow— a mournfid 
procession — suicidal faces, saved against their will from 
drowning ; dolefully trailing a length of reluctant grate- 
fulness, with ropy weeds pendent from locks of watchet 
hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's half-subjects — stolen 
fees from the grave — bilking Charon of his fare. At 
their head Arion — or is it G. D. ?— in his singing gar- 
ments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and votive 
garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) siiatcheth straight, 
intending to suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then 
follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched 
on earth are constrained to drown downright, by wharfs 
where Ophelia twice acts her muddy death. 

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible 
world when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so 
lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks 
once, twice, at Death's door, the sensation aroused within 
the palace must be considerable ; and the grim Feature, 
by modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must 
have learned by this time to pity Tantalus. 

A pulse assiu-edly was felt along the line of the Elysian 
shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was announced by 
no equivocal indications. From their seats of Asphodel 
arose the gentler and the graver ghosts — poet, or historian 
— of Grecian or of Roman lore — to crown with vmfading 
chaplets the half-finished love-labours of their unwearied 
scholiast. Him Markland expected — him Tyrwhitt hoped 
to encounter — him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom 
he had barely seen upon earth, ^ with newest airs prepared 

to greet ; and patron of the gentle Christ's boy, — 

who should have been his patron through life — the mild 

Askew, with longing aspirations leaned foremost from his 

1 Graium tcmtum vidit. 



286 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

venerable ^sculapian chair, to welcome into that happy 
company the matured virtues of the man, whose tender 
scions in the boy he himself upon earth had so prophetic- 
ally fed and watered. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 

Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — are 
among the very best of their sort. They fall below the 
plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest 
spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his compositions of a 
similar structure. They are in truth what Milton, cen- 
suring the Arcadia, says of that work (to which they are 
a sort of after-tune or application), " vain and amatorious " 
enough, yet the things in their kind (as he confesses to 
be true of the romance) may be "full of worth and wit." 
They savour of the Courtier, it must be allowed, and not 
of the Commonwealthsman. But Milton was a Courtier 
when he wrote the Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still 
more a Courtier when he composed the Arcades. When 
the national struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast 
these vanities behind him ; and if the order of time had 
thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis which preceded the 
revolution, there is no reason why he should not have 
acted the same part in that emergency, which has glorified 
the name of a later Sydney. He did not want for plain- 
ness or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French 
match may testify he could speak his mind freely to 
Princes. The times did not call him to the scaffold. 

The Sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Milton 
were the compositions of his maturest years. Those of 
Sydney, which I am about to produce, were written in 
the very heyday of his blood. They are stuck full of 
amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, befitting his occu- 
pation ; for True Love thinks no labour to send out 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 287 

Thoughts upon the vast and more than Indian voyages, 
to bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, 
jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self- depreciating simih- 
tudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. 
We must be Lovers — or at least the cooling touch of 
time, the circum prcecordia frigus, must not have so 
damped our faculties, as to take away our recollection 
that we were once so — before we can duly appreciate the 
glorious vanities and graceful hyperboles of the passion. 
The images which lie before our feet (though by some 
accounted the only natural) are least natm'al for the high 
Sydnean love to express its fancies by. They may serve 
for the loves of Tibullus, or the dear Author of the 
Schoolmistress ; for passions that creep and whine in 
Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never 
loved at this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses 
{ad Leonoram I mean) have rather erred on the farther 
side ; and that the poet came not much short of a 
religious indecorum, when he 'could thus apostrophize a 
singing-girl : — 

Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) 

Obtigit sethereis ales ab ordinibus. 
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 

Nam tua prsesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ? 
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli 

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens ; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet niortalia corda 

Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaqub fusus. 
In te una loquitur, cetera mutus habet. 

This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it requires 
some candour of construction (besides the slight darken- 
ing of a dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly 
appearance of something very like blasphemy in the last 
two verses. I think the Lover would have been stag- 
gered if he had gone about to express the same thought 
in English. I am sure Sydney has no flights like this. 
His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he 



288 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with 
his mortal passions. 



With how sad steps, Moon, thou climb'st the skies 

How silently ; and with how wan a face ! 

What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place 

That busy Archer his sharp arrow tries ? 

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 

I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht gi-ace 

To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 

Then, even of fellowship, Moon, tell me. 

Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit ? 

Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? 

Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ! 

The last line of this poem is a little obscured by- 
transposition. He means, Do they call ungratefulness 
there a virtue 1 



Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe. 
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
The indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease^ 
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 

make in me those civil wars to cease : 

1 will good tribute pay if thou do so. 

Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
And if these things, as being thine by right, 
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 



III. 



The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes, 

1 Press, 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 289 

Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies. 
Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage. 
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage. 
fools, or over- wise ! alas, the race 
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, 
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 



Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 

Seem most alone in greatest company, 

With dearth of words, or answers quite awry. 

To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 

They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, 

That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 

So in my swelling breast, that only I 

Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 

Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess, 

Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 

But one worse fault — xhiibition — I confess. 

That makes me oft my best friends overpass. 

Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 

Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 



Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance. 
Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 
Both by the judgment of the English eyes. 
And of some sent from that siveet enemy, — France ; 
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 
Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
His praise to sleight, which from good use cloth rise 
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I do take 
My blood from them, who did excel in this. 
Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face 
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 



290 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



In martial sports I had my cunuing tried, 
And yet to break more staves did me address, 
While with the jDeople's shouts (I must confess) 
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride- 
When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 
In Mars' livery, prancing in the j^ress, 
' What now, Sir Fool ! " said he ; " I would no less : 
Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied, 
Who hard by made a window send forth light. 
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 
One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 
My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 
Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 



No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 

give my passions leave to run their race ; 
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 

Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
Let me no steps, Ijut of lost labour, trace ; 
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case — 
But do not will me from my love to fly. 

1 do not envy Aristotle's wit. 

Nor do aspire to Cajsar's bleeding fame ; 
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit ; 
Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame. 
But that which once may win thy cruel heart : 
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 



Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, 
School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 
What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss, 
When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 
And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 
In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie. 
Doth lour, nay chide, nay tlireat, for only this. 
Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 
But no 'sense serves ; she makes her wrath appear 
In Beauty's throne — see now who dares come near 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 291 

Those scarlet judges, threat'niug bloody pain ? 
heav'uly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
Anger invests with such a lovely grace. 
That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 



I never drank of AganijDpe well, 

•Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 

And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 

Poor lay-man I, for sacred rites unfit. 

Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell, 

But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 

And this I swear by blackest brook of hen, 

I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 

How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 

My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth How 

In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please ? 

Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no ! 

Or so ? — much less. How then ? sure thus it is. 

My lips are sweet, inspir'd with Stella's kiss. 



Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name. 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
Nor that he could, young- wise, wise -valiant, frame 
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ; 
And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame, 
That Balance weigh' d what Sword did late obtain 
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid, 
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws. 
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause — 
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
To lose his crown rathei' than fail his love. 



happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 

1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear. 
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine. 



292 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, 
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
Eavish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine. 
And fain those Joel's youth there would their stay 
Have made ; biit, forced by nature still to fly, 
First did with pufling kiss those locks display. 
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 
With sight thereof cried out, fair disgrace. 
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place ! 



Highwaj^ since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet, 
More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet. 
My Miise and I must you of duty greet 
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed, 
By no encroachment wrong' d, nor time forgot ; 
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed. 
And that you know, I envy you no lot 
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 

Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last 
sonnet, are my favourites. But the general beauty of 
them all is, that they are so perfectly characteristical. 
The spirit of "learning and of chivalry," — of which 
imion, Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the 
"president," — shines through them. I confess I can see 
nothing of the "jejune" or "frigid" in them; much less 
of the " stiff " and " cumbrous " — which I have some- 
times heard objected to the Arcadia. The verse runs 
off swiftly and gallantly. It might have been tuned to 
the trumpet ; or tempered (as himself expresses it) to 
" trampling horses' feet." They abound in felicitous 
phrases — 

heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 

Wi Sonnet. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 293 

Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 

A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 

'Id Sonnet. 

■ That sweet enemy, — France — 

bth Sonnet. 

But they are not rich in words only, in vague and 
unlocahsed feelings — the failing too much of some poetry 
of the present day — they are fall, material, and circum- 
stantiated. Time and place appropriates every one of 
them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itself upon a 
thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendent passion per- 
vading and illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of 
arms, the opinions of contemporaries, and his jiidgment of 
them. An historical thread runs through them, which 
almost affixes a date to them ; marks the when and ivhere 
they were written. 

I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit 
of these poems, because I have been hurt by the wanton- 
ness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) with 
which W. H. takes every occasion of insulting the memory 
of Sir Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of 
Table Talk, etc. (most profound and subtle where they 
are, as for the most part, just), are more safely to be relied 
upon, on subjects and authors he has a partiality for, 
than on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice 
against. Milton wrote sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and 
it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. 
But I was unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. 
The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical deli- 
cacies of character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite 
of some stiffness and encumberment), justify to me the 
character which his contemporaries have left us of the 
writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip 
Sydney was that o2)prohrious thing which a foolish noble- 
man in his insolent hostility chose to term him. I call 
to mind the epitaph made on him, to guide me to juster 
thoughts of him ; and I repose upon the beautiful lines 



294 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

in the " Friend's Passion for his Astrophel," printed with 
the Elegies of Spenser and others. 

You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 

(That I should live to say I knew, 

And have not in possession still !) — 

Things known permit me to renew — 
Of him you know his merit such, 
I cannot say — you hear — too much. 

Within these woods of Arcady 

He chief delight and pleasure took ; 

And on the mountain Partheny, 

Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
The Muses met him every day, 
That taught him sing, to write, and say. 

When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine : 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 

To hear him speak, and sweetly smile. 

You were in Paradise the while. 

^■1 sweet attractive kind of grace ; 

A full assurcmce given by looks ; 

Continual comfort in a face, 

The lineaiiients of GosjJel books — 
I trow that count'nance cannot lye, 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 



Above all others this is he, 
Which erst approved in his song, 
That love and honour might agree, 
And that pure love will do no Avrong. 

Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 

To love a man of virtuous name. 

Did never love so sweetly breathe 
In any mortal breast before ; 
Did never Muse inspire beneath 
A Poet's brain with finer store ! 

He -ftTote of Love with high conceit. 

And Beauty rear'd above her height. 

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 295 

into rage) in the Poem, — the last in the collection accom- 
panying the above, — which from internal testimony I 
believe to be Lord Brooke's — beginning with " Silence 
augmenteth grief," and then serionsly ask himself, whether 
the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets 
could have been that thing which Lord Oxford termed him. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY -FIVE YEARS AGO. 

Dan Stuae,t once told us, that he did not remember 
that he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at 
Somerset House in his life. He might occasionally have 
escorted a party of ladies across the way that were 
going in, but he never went in of his own head. Yet 
the office of the Morning Post newspaper stood then 
just where it does now — we are carrying you back, 
reader, some thirty years or more — with its gilt-globe- 
topt front facing that emi^orium of our artists' grand 
Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish that we had 
observed the same abstinence with Daniel. 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one 
of the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of the Morning 
Chronicle, was equally joleasant, with a dash, no slight 
one either, of the com-tier. S. was frank, plain, and 
English all over. We have worked for both these 
gentlemen. 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ; 
to trace the first little bubbliugs of a mighty river, 

With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's ex- 
ploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant Nilus, 
we well remember on one fine summer holyday (a 
"whole day's leave" we called it at Christ's hospital) 



296 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well provisioned 
either for such an undertaking, to trace the current of 
the NeAV River — Middletonian stream ! — to its scaturient 
source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. 
Gallantly did Ave commence our solitary quest — for it 
was essential to the dignity of a Discovery, that no 
eye of schoolboy, save our own, should beam on the 
detection. By flowery spots, and verdant lanes skirting 
Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a baffling turn ; 
endless, hopeless meanders, as it seemed ; or as if the 
jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant to have the 
humble spot of their nativity revealed ; till spent, and 
nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we sate down 
somewhere by Bowes Farm near Tottenham, with a tithe 
of our jDroposed labours only yet accomplished ; sorely 
convinced in spirit, that that Bruciau enterjOTse was as 
yet too arduous for our young shoulders. 

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the 
traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters up to their 
shallow f outlet, than it is to a pleased and candid reader 
to go back to the inexperienced essays, the first callow 
flights in authorship, of some established name in litera- 
ture ; from the Gnat which preluded to the ^neid, to 
the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on. 

In those days, every Morning Paper, as an essential 
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was 
bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. 
Sixpence a joke — and it was thought pretty high too — 
was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. 
The chat of the day — scandal, but, above all, dress — 
furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was 
to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they 
must be poignant. 

A fashion oi flesh, or rather jom^-coloured hose for the 
ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture when we were 
on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s 
Paper, established our rei^utation in that line. We were 
pronounced a "capital hand." the conceits which we 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 297 

varied upon red in all its prismatic differences ! from the 
trite and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming 
costume of the lady that has her sitting upon "many 
waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. 
What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of 
touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, 
of a seemingly ever approximating something " not quite 
proper;" while, like a skilful posture -master, balancing 
betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, 
from which a hair's -breadth deviation is destruction ; 
hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where 
"both seem either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Auto- 
lycus-like in the Play, still putting off" his expectant 
auditory "with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!" 
But above all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, 
and still tickles our midriff to remember, where, allu- 
sively to the flight of Astrsea — ultima Coelestum terras 
reliquit — we pronounced — in reference to the stockings 
still — that Modesty, taking hee final leave of 

MOETALS, HER LAST BlUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER ASCENT 

TO THE Heavens by the tract of the glowing in- 
step. This might be called the crowning conceit : and 
was esteemed tolerable writing in those days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes 
away; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. 
The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to 
reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to 
stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, 
methought, so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, 
and more than single meanings. 

Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns 
daily consecutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the 
stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes 
daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelve- 
month, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder 
exaction. " Man goeth forth to his work until the 
evening" — from a reasonable hour in the morning, we 
presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation 



298 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

took US up from eight till five every day in the city ; and 
as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally 
to do with anything rather than business, it follows, that 
the only time we coidd spare for this manufactory of 
jokes — our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in 
every want beyond mere bread and cheese — was exactly 
that part of the day which (as we have heard of No 
Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time ; 
that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and 
awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time of an 
hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, 
whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to 
wait for his breakfast. 

those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, or 
half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark 
seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps 
not above four hours in bed — (for we were no go-to-beds 
with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in 
her rising — we like a parting cup at midnight, as all 
young men did before these effeminate times, and to 
have our friends aboiit us — we were not constellated 
under Aquarius that watery sign, and therefore incapable 
of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless — we were none of 
your Basilian watersponges, nor had taken our degrees at 
Mount Ague — we were right toping Capulets, jolly com- 
panions, we and they) — but to have to get up, as we 
said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with 
only a dim vista of refreshing bohea in the distance — to 
be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of 
an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical 
pleasure in lier annoimcement that it was " time to rise ;" 
and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to 
amputate, and string them up at our chamber door, 
to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in 
future 

" Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the 
" descending " of the over-night, balmy the first sinking 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 299 

of the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to get up, as he 
goes on to say, 

— revocare gracilis, superasqiie evadere ad auras — 

and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice pre- 
pended — there was the "labour," there the "work." 

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to 
that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out 
for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon 
us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays too), 
why, it seems notliing ! We make twice the number 
every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim 
no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our 
head. But when the head has to go out to them- — when 
the mountain must go to Mahomet — 

Keader, try it for once, only for a short twelvemonth. 

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings 
came up ; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged untract- 
able subject ; some topic impossible to be contorted into 
the risible ; some feature, upon which no smile coidd 
play; some flint, from Avhich no process of ingenuity 
could procure a scintillation. There they lay; there 
your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, 
which you must finish, "with or without straw, as it 
happened. The craving dragon — the Public — like him 
in Bel's Temple — must be fed, it expected its daily 
rations ; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did 
the best Ave could on this side bursting him. 

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for 
the Post, and writhing under the toil of what is called 
"easy writing," Bob Allen, our qnondam schoolfellow, 
was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service for 
the Orach. Not that Kobert troubled himself much 
about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air about 
them, it was sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so 
far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no very 
important one, was not seldom palmed upon his em- 
ployers for a good jest ; for example sake — " Walking 



300 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

yesterday morning casually doivn Snoiv Hill, ivlio shotdd 
we meet hit Mr. Dejy^dy Humj^lireys ! we rejoice to add, 
that the ivorthy Depidy appeared to enjoy a good state of 
health. We do not remember ever to have seen him look 
better." This gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow 
Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a 
constant butt for mirth to the small paragraph-mongers 
of the clay ; and our friend thought that he might have 
his fling at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn 
shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, which he 
told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling 
at the anticipated effects of its announcement next day 
in the paper. 

We did not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay 
at the time ; nor was it easy to be detected, when the 
thing came out advantaged by type and letterpress. He 
had better have met anything that morning than a 
Common Council Man. His services were shortly after 
dispensed with, on the plea that his paragraphs of late 
had been deficient in point. The one in question, it must 
be owned, had an air, in the opening especially, proper 
to awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or moral, wears 
the aspect of humanity and good neighbourly feeling. 
But somehow the conclusion was not judged altogether 
to answer to the magnificent promise of the premises. 
We traced our friend's pen afterwards in the True 
Briton, the Star, the Traveller, — from all which he was 
successively dismissed, the Proprietors having " no fiu-ther 
occasion for his services." Nothing was easier than to 
detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there 
constantly appeared the following — "It is not generally 
hnoivn that the three Blv,e Balls at tlie Pawnbrokers^ shops 
are the ancient- arms of Lombardy. The Lombards were 
the first money-brokers in Europe." Bob has done more 
to set the public right on this important point of blazonry, 
than the whole College of Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to 
be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 301 

find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Parson 
Este, and Toi^ham, brought up the set custom of " witty 
paragraphs " first in the World. Boaden was a reigning 
paragi-aphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the 
Oracle. But, as we said, the fashion of jokes passes 
away ; and it woidd be difiicvdt to discover in the bio- 
grapher of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and 
fan'cy which charmed the whole town at the commence- 
ment of the present century. Even the prelusive deli- 
cacies of the present writer — the cm't "Astrsean allu- 
sion " — ^would be thought pedantic and out of date, in 
these days. 

From the office of the Horning Fast (for we may as 
well exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by 
change of property in the paper, we were transferred, 
mortifying exchange ! to the office of the Albion News- 
paper, late Eackstrow's Museum, in Fleet street. What 
a transition — from a handsome apartment, from rosewood 
desks and silver inkstands, to an office — no office, but a 
den rather, but just redeemed from the occupation of dead 
monsters, of which it seemed redolent — from the centre 
of loyalty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedi- 
tion ! Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square 
contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor and 
humble paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat in the 
discharge of his new editorial functions (the " Bigod " of 
Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick. 

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not 
many in the pockets of his friends whom he might com- 
mand, had purchased (on tick, doubtless) the whole and 
sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and 
titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion from one 
Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had 
stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. 
With this hopeless concern — for it had been sinking ever 
since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not 
more than a hundred subscribers — F. resolutely determined 
upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, 



302 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

and making both oiir fortunes by way of corollary. For 
seven weeks and more did this infatuated democrat go 
about borrowing seven-shdling pieces, and lesser coin, to 
meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed 
no credit to publications of that side in politics. An out- 
cast from politer bread, we attached om' small talents to 
the forlorn fortimes of our friend. Oiu- occupation now 
was to write treason. 

Recollections of feehngs — which were all that now re- 
mained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French 
Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred in the com- 
pany of some who are accounted very good men now — 
riitlier than any tendency at this time to Republican 
doctrines — -assisted us in assuming a style of "WTiting, 
while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under tone 
to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now 
to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdica- 
tions. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered 
with flowers of so cimning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes 
says, never naming the thing directly — that the keen eye 
of an Attorney- General was insufficient to detect the 
lurking snake among them. There were times, indeed, 
when we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation 
under Stuart. But Avith change of masters it is ever 
change of service. Already one paragraph, and another, 
as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the Treasiu-y, 
had begun to be marked at that office, Avith a view of its 
being submitted at least to the attention of the proper 
Law Officers — Avhen an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram 

from our pen, aimed at Sir J — — s M h, who Avas on 

the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his 
apostasy, as F. pronounced it (it is hardly Avorth parti- 
cularizing), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord 
(or, as he then delighted to be called Citizen) Stanhope, 
deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from 
the last patron that had stuck by us ; and breaking up 
oiu- establishment, left us to the safe, but someAAdiat 
mortifying, neglect of the CroAsai Lawyers. It was about 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 303 

this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that 
cimous confession to ns, that he had " never deliberately 
walked into an Exhibition at Somerset House in his 
life." 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY 
IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

HoGAETH excepted, can we produce any one painter 
within the last fifty years, or since the hmnoiu' of ex- 
hibiting began, that has treated a story imaginatively ? 
By this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted, 
tliat it has seemed to direct him — not to be arranged by 
him 1 Any upon whom its leading or collateral points 
have impressed themselves so tyi-annically, that he dared 
not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation 1 
Any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so 
much truth as is enough to convey a story with clearness, 
but that individuahzing property, which should keep the 
subject so treated distinct in featiu-e from every other 
subject, however similar, and to common apprehensions 
almost identical; so that we might say, this and this 
part could have found an appropriate place in no other 
pictm-e in the world but this'? Is there anything in 
modern art — we -v^oll not demand that it should be equal 
—but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, 
in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the 
" Aiiadne," in the National GaUeiy 1 Precipitous, with 
his reeling satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illiun- 
ing suddenly the waste places, dnmk \aih. a new fiuy 
beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings 
himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With 
this telling of the story, an artist, and no ordinary one, 
might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious 
version of it, saw no farther. But from the depths of 



304 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and 
laid it contributory with the present to one simultaneous 
effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals 
of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new 
offers of a god, — as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly 
casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant — her 
soul imdistracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pacing 
the solitary shore in as much heart-silence, and in almost 
the same local solitude, with which she awoke at day- 
break to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that 
bore away the Athenian. 

Here are two points miraculously co- uniting; fierce 
society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon- 
day revelations, with the accidents of the dull gray dawn 
unquenched and lingering ; the present Bacchus, with the 
2xist Ariadne : two stories, with double Time ; separate, 
and harmonizing. Had the artist made the woman one 
shade less indifferent to the God; still more, had she 
expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have been 
the story of the mighty desolation of the heart previous 1 
merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met 
with a welcome acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus 
was not likely to be pieced up by a God. 

"We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture 
by Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of 
the new-born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer 
mother of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier sire 
perhaps of men since born. But these are matters sub- 
ordinate to the conception of the situation, displayed in 
this extraordinary production. A tolerable modern artist 
would have been satisfied with tempering certain raptures 
of connubial anticipation, with a suitable acknowledgment 
to the Giver of the blessing, in the countenance of the 
first bridegroom : something like the divided attention of 
the chUd (Adam was here a child-man) between the given 
toy, and the mother who had just blest it with the 
bauble. This is the obvious, the first -sight view, the 
supei-ficial. An artist of a higher grade, considering the 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 305 

awful presence they were in, would have taken care to 
subtract something from the expression of the more human 
passion, and to heighten the more spiritual one. This 
would be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening 
of Somerset House to last year's show, has been encouraged 
to look for. It is obvious to hint at a lower expression 
yet, in a picture that, for respects of drawing and colour- 
ing, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within 
these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures should be 
as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero ! 
By neither the one passion nor the other has Raphael 
expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his brow 
sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. 
The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not 
self-conscious of his art, in which neither of the conflict- 
ing emotions — -a moment how abstracted ! — have had 
time to spring up, or to battle for indecorous mastery. — 
We have seen a landscape of a justly-admired neoteric, 
in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, one of the 
most severely beautiful in antiquity — the gardens of the 

Hesperides. To do Mr. ■ justice, he had painted a 

laudable orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable 
dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow 
a fac-simile for the situation), looking over into the world 
shut out backwards, so that none but a " still-climbing 
Hercules " could hope to catch a peep at the admired 
Ternary of Recluses. No conventual porter could keep 
his keys better than this custos with the " lidless eyes." 
He not only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, 
but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules aut 
Diabolus by any manner of means can. So far all is well. 
We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra, 
the damsels are snug enough. But here the artist's 
coiu-age seems to have failed him. He began to pity his 
pretty charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has 
peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, 
maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, according 
to the approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth 

X 



306 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

century ; giving to the whole scene the air of a fete- 
chamiMre, if we ^vill but excuse the absence of the 
gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish. But what is 
become of the solitary mystery — the 

Daugliters three, 
That sing around the golden tree ? 

This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated 
this subject. 

The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectiu'al 
designs, of a modem artist, have been urged as objections 
to the theory of our motto. They are of a character, we 
confess, to stagger it. His towered structures are of the 
highest order of the material sublime. Whether they 
were dreams, or transcripts of some elder workmanship — 
Assyrian ruins old — restored by this mighty artist, they 
satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the 
glories of the antique world. It is a pity that they were 
ever peopled. On that side, the imagination of the artist 
halts, and appears defective. Let us examine the point 
of the story in the " Belshazzar's Feast." We will intro- 
duce it by an apposite anecdote. 

The com-t historians of the day record, that at the first 
dinner given by the late King (then Prince Regent) at 
the Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was played 
off. The guests were select and admiring ; the banquet 
profuse and admirable ; the lights lustrous and oriental ; 
the eye was perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, 
among which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the 
regalia in the Tower for this especial pmpose, itself a 
tower ! stood conspicuous for its magnitude. And now 
the Eev. * * *, the then admired coiu-t Chaplain, was 
proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal given, the 
lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency 
was discovered, in which glittered in gold letters — 

" Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up- Alive ! " 

Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges and 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 307 

garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion ! 
The fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by 
the sly court-pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-nanie fainting, 
and the Countess of * * * holding the smelling-bottle, 
till the good-humoured Prince caused harmony to be re- 
stored, by calling in fresh candles, and declaring that the 
whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the 
ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, from hints which 
his Royal Highness himself had furnished ! Then ima- 
gine the infinite applause that followed, the mutual 
rallyings, the declarations that " they were not much 
frightened," of the assembled galaxy. 

The point of time in the pictm-e exactly answers to 
the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The 
huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and 
the mock alarm ; the prettinesses heightened by conster- 
nation ; the courtier's fear which was flattery ; and the 
lady's which was affectation ; all that we may conceive 
to have taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, 
sympathizing with the well-acted surprise of their sove- 
reign ; all this, and no more, is exhibited by the well- 
dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this 
sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of dis- 
quieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having 
gone ofl" ! 

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety 
for the preservation of their persons — such as we have 
witnessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has 
been given — an adequate exponent of a supernatural 
terror? the way in which the finger of God, writing 
judgments, would have been met by the withered con- 
science? There is a human fear, and a divine fear. 
The one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape ; 
the other is bowed down, eff'ortless, passive. When the 
spirit appeared before Eliphaz in the visions of the night, 
and the hair of his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts 
of the Temauite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to 
call up the servants % But let us see in the text what 



308 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar consterna- 
tion. 

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar 
had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and 
drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver 
vessels are gorgeously emimerated, with the princes, the 
Mng's concubines, and his wives. Then follows — 

" In the same horn' came forth fingers of a man's 
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick ui^on the 
l^laster of the wall of the king's palace ; and the king 
saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the hinges 
coimtenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, 
so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his 
knees smote one against another." 

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be other- 
wise inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined 
to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was 
troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any 
else there present, not even by the queen herself, who 
merely undertakes for the interpretation of the pheno- 
menon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. 
The lords are simply said to be astonished ; i.e. at the 
trouble and the change of countenance in their sovereign. 
Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, 
which the king saw. He recalls it only, as Joseph did 
the Dream to the King of Egypt. " Then was the part 
of the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this writing 
was written." He speaks of the phantasm as past. 

Then what becomes of this needless midtiplication of 
the miracle? this message to a royal conscience, singly 
expressed — for it was said, " Thy kingdom is divided," — 
simultaneously impressed upon the fancies of a thousand 
coiu'tiers, who were implied in it neither directly nor 
grammatically 1 

But, admitting the artist's own version of the story, 
and that the sight was seen also by the thousand 
courtiers — let it have been visible to all Babylon — as the 
knees of Belshazzar were shaken, and his coimtenance 



ON THE PKODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 309 

troubled, even so would the knees of every man in 
Babylon, and their countenances, as of an individual 
man, have been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would 
they have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of 
struggling with that inevitable judgment. 

Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be 
shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells 
upon the brilliant individualities in a " Marriage at 
Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, to the very textm-e and 
colour of the wedding garments, the ring glittering upon 
the bride's finger, the metal and fashion of the wine- 
pots ; for at such seasons there is leisure and luxury to 
be curious. But in a " day of judgment," or in a " day 
of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at the impious feast of 
Belshazzar, the eye shoidd see, as the actual eye of an 
agent or patient in the immediate scene would see, only 
in masses and indistinction. Not only the female attire 
and jewelry exposed to the critical eye of the fashion, as 
minutely as the dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in the 
criticised picture — but perhaps the cimosities of anatomical 
science, and studied diversities of posture, in the falling 
angels and sinners of Michael Angelo, — have no business 
in theu' great subjects. There was no leisiu'e for them. 

By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting 
got at their true conclusions ; by not shomng the actual 
appearances, that is, all that was to be seen at any given 
moment by an indifferent eye, but only what the eye 
might be supposed to see in the doing or suff"ering of 
some portentous action. Suppose the moment of the 
swallowing up of Pompeii. There they were to be seen — 
houses, columns, architectm-al proportions, differences of 
public and private buildings, men and women at their 
standing occupations, the diversified thousand postures, 
attitudes, dresses, in some confusion truly, but physically 
they were visible. But what eye saw them at that eclips- 
ing moment, which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, 
and Avhen the senses are upturned from their proprieties, 
when sight and hearing are a feeling only 1 A thousand 



310 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

years have passed, and we are at leisirre to contemplate 
the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at his 
oven, and to turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots 
and pans of Pompeii. 

" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou. Moon, 
in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnifi- 
cent Hebraism, in his conception, sees aught but the 
heroic son of Nun, with the outstretched arm, and the 
greater and lesser light obsequious? Doubtless there 
were to be seen hill and dale, and chariots and horsemen, 
on open plain, or winding by sec]-et defiles, and all the 
circumstances and stratagems of war. But whose eyes 
would have been conscious of this array at the interposi- 
tion of the synchronic miracle 1 Yet in the jDicture of 
this subject by the artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast " — 
no ignoble work, either — the marshalling and landscape 
of the war is everything, the miracle sinks into an anec- 
dote of the day ; and the eye may " dart through rank 
and file traverse " for some minutes, before it shall dis- 
cover, among his armed followers, tvhich is Joshua ! 
Not modern art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be 
found if anywhere, can be detected erring, from defect of 
this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to show 
of the preternatural in painting, transcending the figiu-e 
of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great pictiu-e 
at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two beings. 
A ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly-apprehend- 
ing gratitude at second life bestowed. It cannot forget 
that it was a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a body. 
It has to tell of the world of spirits. — Was it from a 
feeling, that the crowd of half- impassioned bystanders, 
and the still more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a dis- 
tance, who have not heard, or but faintly have been told 
of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in design 
and hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond 
adequately to the action — that the single figiu'e of the 
Lazarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the 
mighty Sebastian vmfairly robbed of the fame of the 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 311 

greater half of the interest ? Now that there were not 
indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the eyes of 
those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it had 
but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood 
to deny ; but would they see them 1 or can the mind in 
the conception of it admit of such unconcerning objects ; 
can it think of them at all 1 or what associating league 
to tlie imagination can there be between the seers and 
the seers not, of a presential miracle ? 

Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a 
Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state of 
expectation, the patron would not, or ought not be fully 
satisfied with a beautifid naked figure recumbent under 
wide -stretched oaks? Dis-seat those woods, and place 
the same figure among fountains, and falls of pellucid 
water, and you have a — Naiad ! Not so in a rougla print 
we have seen after Julio Romano, we think — for it is 
long since- — there, by no process, with mere change of 
scene, could the figure have reciprocated characters. 
Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, 
beautiful in convolution and distortion, linked to her con- 
natural tree, co-twisting with its limbs her own, till both 
seemed either — these, animated branches ; tliose, disani- 
mated members — yet the animal and vegetable lives 
suflficiently kept distinct — his Dryad lay — an approxima- 
tion of two natures, which to conceive, it must be seen ; 
analogous to, not the same with, the delicacies of Ovidian 
transformations. 

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial comijre- 
hension, the most barren, the Great Masters gave loftiness 
and fruitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in the 
meanness of present objects their capabilities of treatment 
from their relations to some grand Past or Future. How 
has Raphael — we must still linger about the Vatican — ■ 
treated the humble craft of the ship -builder, in his 
" Building of the Ark " ? It is in that scriptural series, 
to which we have referred, and which, judging from some 
fine rough old graphic sketches of them which we possess, 



312 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

seem to be of a higher and more poetic grade than even 
the Cartoons. The dim of sight are the timid and the 
shrinking. There is a cowardice in modern art. As the 
Frenchman, of whom Coleridge's friend made the pro- 
phetic guess at Rome, from the beard and horns of the 
Moses of Michael Angelo collected no inferences beyond 
that of a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so from this subject, 
of mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively turn 
away, as from one incapable of investitui'e with any 
grandeur. The dock-yards at Woolwich would object 
derogatory associations. The depot at Chatham would 
be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But 
not to the nautical preparations in the ship -yards of 
Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for instructions, when 
he imagined the building of the Vessel that was to be 
conservatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned 
mankind. In the intensity of the action he keejjs ever 
out of sight the meanness of the operation. There is the 
Patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy prescience, 
giving directions. And there are his agents — the solitary 
but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, every one with the 
might and earnestness of a Demiurgus ; under some in- 
stinctive rather than technical guidance ! giant -muscled ; 
every one a Hercules ; or liker to those Vulcanian Three, 
that in sounding caverns under Mongibello wrought in 
fire — Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So 
work the workmen that should repair a world ! 

Artists again err in the confounding of x>oetic with 
pictorial sitbjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents 
are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. 
Othello's colour — the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir 
John FalstafF — do they haunt us perpetually in the 
reading 1 or are they obtruded upon our conceptions one 
time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the 
respective moral or intellectual attributes of the char- 
acter 1 But in a picture Othello is always a Blackamoor ; 
and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealized, 
and enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters of ex- 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 313 

ternality, must be the mind, to which, in its better 
moments, the image of the high-souled, high-intelhgenced 
Quixote — the errant Star of Knighthood, made more 
tender by eclipse — has never presented itself divested 
from the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a 
rabblement at the heels of Kosinante. That man has 
read his book by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking his 
author's purport, which was — tears. The artist that 
pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that 
he is every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the 
shallow hope of exciting mirth, woidd have joined the 
rabble at tlae heels of his starved steed. We wish not 
to see that counterfeited, which we would not have wished 
to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of 
the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered 
person was passing, would have stepped over his threshold 
to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the " strange 
bed-fellows which misery brings a man acquainted with"? 
Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy Second Part could jDut 
into the mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a 
super-chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of the 
shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their 
pretty net-works, and inviting him to be a guest with 
them, in accents like tliese: "Truly, fairest Lady, Actaeon 
was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing 
herself at the fountain, than I have been in beholding 
your beauty : I commend the manner of your pastime, 
and thank you for your kind offers ; and, if I may serve 
you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may com- 
mand me : for my profession is this. To show myself 
thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, 
especially of the rank that yoiu* person shows you to be ; 
and if those nets, as they take up but a little piece of 
ground, should take up the whole world, I would seek 
out new worlds to pass through, rather than break them : 
and (he adds) that you may give credit to this my 
exaggeration, i)ehold at least he that promiseth you this, 
is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath 



314 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

come to your hearing." Illustrious Eomaucer ! were the 
" hue frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own 
Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to he ex- 
posed to the jeers of Duennas and Serving-men? to be 
monstered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of 
great men 1 Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy 
First Part misleads him, ahvays from tvithin, into half- 
ludicrous, but more than half-compassionable and admir- 
able errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men 
by studied artifices must devise and practise upon the 
humour, to inflame where they should soothe it 1 Why, 
G-oneril would have blushed to practise upon the abdi- 
cated king at this rate, and the she -wolf Eegan not have 
endured to ]3lay the pranks upon his fled wits, which 
thou first made thy Quixote sufier in Duchesses' halls, 
and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.^ 

In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of 
the most consummate artist in the Book way that the 
world hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the 
reader the heroic attributes of the character without 
relaxing ; so as absolutely that they shall sufier no alloy 
from the debasing fellowship) of the clown. If it ever 
obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh; 
or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? — Cervantes, 
stung, perchance, by the relish with which his Reading 
Public had received the fooleries of the man, more to 
their palates than the generosities of the master, in the 
sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony and the 
balance, and sacrificed a great idea to the taste of his 
contemporaries. We know that in the present day the 
Knight has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anticipat- 
ing, what did actually happen to him — as afterwards it 
did to his scarce inferior follower, the Author of " Guz- 
man de Alfarache " — that some less knowing hand would 
prevent him by a spurious Second Part ; and judging 
that it would be easier for his competitor to outbid him 

"■^, Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures are mostlj' 
selected ; tlie waiting-women with beards, etc. 



THE WEDDING. 315 

in the comicalities, than in the roinance, of his work, he 
abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire 
for his Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of 
Sancho? and instead of that twilight state of semi- 
insanity — the madness at second-hand — the contagion, 
caught from a stronger mind infected — that war between 
native cunning, and hereditary deference, with which he 
has liitherto accompanied his master — two for a pair 
almost — does he substitute a downright Knave, with 
open eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed 
Madman ; and offering at one time to lay, if not actually 
laying, hands upon him ! From the moment that Sancho 
loses his reverence, Don Quixote is become — a treatable 
lunatic. Our artists handle him accordingly. 



THE WEDDING. 

I DO not know when I have been better pleased than at 
being invited last week to be present at the wedding of 
a friend's daughter. I like to make one at these cere- 
monies, which to us old people give back our youth in a 
manner, and restore our gayest season, in the remem- 
brance of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less 
tender, of our own youthful disappointments, i)i this 
point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to 
be in good humour for a week or two after, and enjoy a 
reflected honeymoon. Being without a family, I am 
flattered with these temporary adoptions into a friend's 
family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the 
season ; I am inducted into degrees of affinity ; and, in 
the participated socialities of the little community, I lay 
down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I carry 
this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, 
even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear 

friend. But to my subject. 

The union itself had been long settled, but its cele- 



316 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

bration had been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreason- 
able state of suspense in the lovers, by some invincible 
prejudices which the bride's father had unhappily con- 
tracted upon the subject of the too early marriages of 
females. He has been lecturing any time these five 
years — for to that length the courtship had been pro- 
tracted — -upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity, 
till the lady should have completed her five-and-twentieth 
year. We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as 
yet had abated of none of its ardours, might at last be 
lingered on, till passion had time to cool, and love go out 
in the experiment. But a little wheedling on the part 
of his wife, who was by no means a party to these over- 
strained notions, joined to some serious expostulations on 
that of his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of 
the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many 
years' enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to 
bring matters to a conclusion during his lifetime, at 
length prevailed ; and on Monday last the daughter of my 

old friend, Admiral , having attained the womanly 

age of nineteen, was conducted to the church by her 

pleasant cousin J , who told some few years older. 

Before the youthful part of my female readers express 
their indignation at the abominable loss of time occa- 
sioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of my 
old friend, they will do well to consider the reluctance 
which a fond parent naturally feels at parting with his 
child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most cases 
may be traced the difference of opinion on this point 
between child and parent, whatever pretences of interest 
or prudence may be held out to cover it. The hard- 
heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, 
a sure and moving topic ; but is there not something 
untender, to say no more of it, in the hurry which a 
beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself from the 
paternal stock, and commit herself to strange graftings ? 
The case is heightened where the lady, as in the present 
instance, happens to be an only cliild. I do not under- 



THE WEDDING. 317 

stand these matters exiDerimentally, but I can make a 
shrewd guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon 
these occasions. It is no new observation, I believe, that 
a lover in most cases has no rival so much to be feared 
as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in unparalld 
subjects, which is little less heartrending than the passion 
which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers' 
scruples are more easily got over ; for this reason, I 
suppose, that the protection transferred to a husband is 
less a derogation and a loss to their authority than to the 
paternal. Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, 
which paints the inconveniences (impossible to be con- 
ceived in the same degree by the other parent) of a life 
of forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match 
may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer 
guide here than the cold reasonings of a father on such a 
topic. To this instinct may be imputed, and by it alone 
may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, by which 
some wives push on the matrimonial projects of their 
daughters, which the husband, however approving, shall 
entertain with comparative indifference. A little shame- 
lessness on this head is pardonable. With this explana- 
tion, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal impor- 
tunity receives the name of a virtue. — But the parson 
stays, while I preposterously assume his office ; I am 
preaching, while the bride is on the threshold. 

ISTor let any of my female readers suppose that the 
sage reflections which have just escaped me have the 
obliquest tendency of application to the yoiuig lady, who, 
it will be seen, is about to ventm-e upon a change in her 
condition, at a mature and comjMent age, and not without 
the fullest approbation of all parties. I only dejirecate 
very hasty marriages. 

It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone 
through at an early hoiur, to give time for a little dejeitne 
afterwards, to which a select party of friends had been 
invited. We were in church a little before the clock 
struck eight. 



318 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the 
dress of the bride -maids — the three charming Miss 
Foresters — on this morning. To give the bride an 
opportunity- of shining singly, they had come habited all 
in green. I am ill at describing female apjiarel ; but 
while she stood at the altar in vestments ■white and can- 
did as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in 
robes such as might become Diana's nymphs — Foresters 
indeed — as such who had not yet come to the resohition 
of letting off cold virginity. These young maids, not 
being so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep 
single for their father's sake, and live altogether so haiijoy 
with their remaining parent, that the hearts of their lovers 
are ever broken with the prospect (so inauspicious to their 
hopes) of such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. 
Gallant girls ! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia ! 

I do not know what business I have to be present in 
solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable 
disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I 
was never cut out for a jjublic functionary. Ceremony 
and I have long shaken hands ; but I coidd not resist 
the importimities of the yomig lady's father, whose gout 
unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on this 
occasion, and give moay the hride. Something ludicrous 
occurred to me at this most serious of all moments — a 
sense of my unfitness to have the disposal, even in 
imagination, of the sweet young creatiu'e beside me. I 
fear I was betrayed to some lightness, for the awfid eye 
of the parson — and the rector's eye of St. Mildred's in 
the Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an 
instant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities 
of a funeral. 

This was the only misbehaviour which I can plead to 
upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to 
me after the ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss 

T s, be accounted a solecism. She was j^leased to 

say that she had never seen a gentleman before me give 
away a bride, in black. Now black has been my ordinary 



THE WEDDING. 319 

apparel so long — indeed, I take it to be the proper 
costume of an author — the stage sanctions it — that to 
have appeared in some lighter colour would have raised 
more mirth at my expense than the anomaly had created 
censm-e. But I could perceive that the bride's mother, 
and some elderly ladies present (God bless them !) woidd 
have been well content, if I had come in any other colour 
than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, 
which I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, 
of all the birds being invited to the linnet's wedding, at 
which, when all the rest came in their gayest feathers, 
the raven alone apologised for his cloak because " he had 
no other." This tolerably reconciled the elders. But 
with the young people all was merriment, and shaking of 
hands, and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's 
tears, and kissing from her in return, till a young lady, 
who assumed some experience in these matters, having 
worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer 
than her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half 
an eye upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would 
have " none left." 

My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle on 
this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual neglect of 
personal appearance. He did not once shove up his bor- 
rowed locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) to 
betray the few gray stragglers of his own beneath them. 
He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled 
for the hoiu-, which at length approached, when after a 
protracted breakfast of three hours — if stores of cold 
fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, 
cordials, etc., can deserve so meagre an appellation — the 
coach was annomiced, which was come to carry off the bride 
and bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly or- 
dained, into the country ; upon which design, wishing them 
a felicitous journey, let us return to the assembled guests. 

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 

The eyes of men 

Are idly bent on him that enters next, 



320 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

SO idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the 
chief performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. 
None told his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor 
Admiral made an effort — it was not much. I had antici- 
pated so far. Even the infinity of full satisfaction, that 
had betrayed itself through tlae prim looks and quiet 
deportment of his lady, began to wane into something of 
misgiving. No one knew whether to take their leave or 
stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occasion. In 
this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departiu-e, I must do 
justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise 
like to have brought me into disgrace in the fore-part of 
the day ; I mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking 
and giving vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In 
this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I rattled 
off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were 
willing to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the 
pressure of the intolerable vacuum which had succeeded 
to the morning bustle. By this means I was fortunate 
in keeping together the better part of the company to a 
late hour ; and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite 
game) with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, 
which came opportunely on his side — lengthened out till 
midnight — -dismissed the old gentleman at last to his bed 
with comparatively easy spirits. 

I have been at my old friend's various times since. I 
do not know a visiting place where every guest is so per- 
fectly at his ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely 
the residt of confusion. Everybody is at cross purposes, 
yet the effect is so much better than imiformity. Con- 
tradictory orders ; servants pulling one way ; master and . 
mistress driving some other, yet both diverse ; visitors 
huddled up in corners ; chairs unsymmetrized ; candles 
disposed by chance ; meals at odd hom's, tea and supper 
at once, or the latter joreceding the former ; the host and 
the guest conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each 
understanding himself, neither trying to understand or 
hear the other ; draughts and politics, chess and political 



UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 321 

economy, cards and conversation on nautical matters, ' 
going on at once, without the hope, or indeed the wish, 
of distinguishing them, make it altogether the most per- 
fect Concordia discors you shall meet with. Yet some- 
how the old house is not quite what it should be. The 
Admiral still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily 
to fill it for him. The instrument stands where it stood, 
but slae is gone, whose delicate touch could sometimes 
for a short minute appease the warring elements. He 
has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to " make his destiny 
his choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not come 
out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as formerly. 
His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His wife, too, looks 
as if she wanted some younger body to scold and set to 
rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is wonderful 
how one young maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the 
paternal roof. Old and young seem to have an interest 
in her, so long as she is not absolutely disposed of. The 
youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is married. 



EEJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S 
COMING OF AGE. 

The Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of 
age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the 
breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would 
serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon 
the occasion, to which all the Days in the year were in- 
vited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, 
were mightily taken with the notion. They had been 
engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth 
and good cheer for mortals below ; and it was time they 
should have a taste of their own bounty. It was stifily 
debated among them whether the Fasts should be ad- 
Y 



322 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

mitted. Some said the apiDearance of such lean, starved 
guests, with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends 
of the meeting. But the objection was overruled by 
Christmas Day, who had a design upon Asli Wednesday 
(as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see how the 
old Domine would behave himself in his cups. Only the 
Vigils were requested to come with their lanterns, to 
light the gentlefolks home at night. 

All the Days came to their day. Covers were pro- 
vided for three hundred and sixty -five giiests at the 
principal table ; with an occasional knife and fork at the 
side-board for the Txoenty-Ninth of February. 

I should have tokl you that cards of invitation had 
been issued. The carriers were the Hours; twelve little, 
merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, 
that went all romid, and foimd out the persons invited 
well enough, with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove 
Tuesday, and a few such Moveables, who had lately 
shifted their quarters. 

Well, they all met at last — foul Days, fine Days, all 
sorts of Days, and a rare din they made of it. There 
was nothing but, Hail! fellow Day, well met — brother 
Day — sister Day — only Lady Day kept a little on the 
aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said 
Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she came in a 
tiffany suit, white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, 
all royal, glittering, and Epijihanous. The rest came, 
some in green, some in white — but old Lent and his 
family were not yet out of mourning. Eainy Days came 
in, dripping ; and sunshiny Days helped them to change 
their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his mar- 
riage finery, a little the worse for wear. Pay Day came 
late, as he always does ; and Doomsday sent word — he 
might be expected. 

Aj^ril Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon him- 
self to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with 
it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found 
out any given Day in the year to erect a scheme upon — 



UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 323 

good Bays, bad Bays, were so shuffled together, to the 
confounding of all sober horoscopy. 

He had stuck the Twmty-First of June next to the 
Twenty-Second of Becemher, and the former looked like 
a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got 
wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord 
Mayor's Bays. Lord ! how he laid about him ! Nothing 
but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him 
— to the great greasing and detriment of his new sack- 
cloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Bay was at 
his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, 
and hiccupp'd, and protested there was no faith in dried 
ling, but commended it to the devil for a soiu', windy, 
acrimonious, censorious, liy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and 
no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the 
middle of the great custard that stood before his left-hand 
neighbour, and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, 
till you woidd have taken him for the Last Bay in Be- 
cember, it so hung in icicles. 

At another part of the table, ^Shrove Tuesday was 
helping the Second of Sejytember to some cock broth, — 
which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh 
of a hen pheasant — so that there was no love lost for that 
matter. The Last of Lent was spunging upon Shrove-tide's 
pancakes ; which April Fool perceiving, told him that 
he did well, for pancakes were proper to a good fry- 
day. 

In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth 
of January, who, it seems, being a sour, puritanic cha- 
racter, that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified 
enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's head, 
which he had had cooked at home for that purpose, think- 
ing to feast thereon incontinently ; but as it lay in the 
dish, March Manyiveathers, who is a very fine lady, and 
subject to the meagrims, screamed out there was a " human 
head in the platter," and raved about Herodias' daughter 
to that degree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged to 
be removed ; nor did she recover her stomach till she had 



324 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

gulped down a Restorative, confected of Oak A'pple, whicli 
the merry Twenty -Ninth of May always carries about 
with him for that purpose. 

The King's health ^ being called for after this, a notable 
dispute arose between the Twelfth of Axigiist (a zealous 
old Whig gentlewoman) and the Twenty-Third of Ai^ril 
(a new-fangled lady of the Tory stamp), as to which of 
them should have the honour to propose it. August 
grew hot upon the matter, aflBrming time out of mind the 
prescriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival had 
basely supplanted her; whom she represented as little 
better than a hept mistress, who went about mfine clothes, 
while she (the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely a rag, 
etc. 

April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right, 
in the strongest form of words, to the appellant, but de- 
cided for peace' sake, that the exercise of it should remain 
with the present possessor. At the same time, he slyly 
rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action might 
lie against the Crown for hi-geny. 

It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas lustily 
bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days, 
who protested against bm'ning daylight. Then fair water 
was handed round in silver ewers, and the same lady was 
observed to take an unusual time in Washing herself. 

May Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, 
in a neat speech proposing the health of the founder, 
crowned her goblet (and by her example the rest of the 
company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly 
New Tear, from the upper end of the table, in a cordial 
but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud 
on an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's 
late tenants, promised to improve their farms, and at the 
same time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable) 
in their rents. 

At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days invol- 
untarily looked at each other, and smiled ; April Fool 
^ King George IV. 



UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 325 

whistled to an old tune of "New Brooms;" and a surly 
old rebel at the farther end of the table (who was dis- 
covered to be no other than the Fifth of Noveviber) 
muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the whole 
company, words to this effect — that " when the old one 
is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which 
rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted 
his expulsion ; and the malcontent was thrast out neck 
and heels into the cellar, as the properest place for such 
a houtefeii and firebrand as he had shown himself to be. 

Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say 
truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside his oratory) 
in as few and yet as obliging words as possible, assm'ed 
them of entire welcome ; and, with a graceful turn, sing- 
ling out poor Txventy-Ninth of February, that had sate all 
this while mimichance at the side-board, begged to couple 
his health with that of the good company before him — 
which he drank accordingly ; observing that he had not 
seen his honest face any time these four years — with a 
number of endearing expressions besides. At the same 
time removing the solitary Day from the forlorn seat 
which had been assigned him, he stationed him at his 
own board, somewhere between the Greeh Calends and 
Latter Lammas. 

Ash Wednesday being now called upon for a song, 
with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the 
Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck 
up a Carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for the 
nonce ; and was followed by the latter, who gave " Mise- 
rere " in fine style, hitting off the mumping notes and 
lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite 
humour. April Fool swore they had exchanged condi- 
tions ; but Good Friday was observed to look extremely 
grave ; and Sunday held her fan before her face that she 
might not be seen to smile. 

Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor'' s Day, and April Fool, next 
joined in a glee — 

Which is the properest day to drink ? 



326 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry 
biu'den. 

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The 
question being proposed, who had the greatest number of 
followers — the Quarter Days said, there could be no 
question as to that ; for they had all the creditors in the 
world dogging their heels. But April Fool gave it in 
favoiu: of the Forty Days before Easter ; because the 
debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they 
kej)t Lent all the year. 

All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty 
May, who sate next him, slipping amorous billets-doux 
imder the table, till the Dog Days (who are naturally of 
a warm constitution) began to be jealous, and to bark and 
rage exceedingly. April Fool, who likes a bit of sjoort 
above measure, and had some pretensions to the lady be- 
sides, as being but a cousin once removed, — clapped and 
halloo'd them on ; and as fast as their indignation cooled, 
those mad wags, the E^nber Days, were at it with their 
bellows, to blow it into a flame ; and all was in a ferment, 
till old Madam Septuagesima (who boasts herself the 
Mother of the Days) wisely diverted the conversation 
with a tedious tale of the lovers which she could reckon 
when she was young, and of one Master Rogation Day 
in particular, who was for ever putting the question to 
her; but she kept him at a distance, as the chronicle 
would tell — by which I apprehend she meant the Al- 
manack. Then she rambled on to the Days that were 
gone, the good old Days, and so to the Days before the 
Flood — which plainly showed her old head to be little 
better than crazed and doited. 

Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks and 
greatcoats, and took their leave. Lo7'd Mayor's Day 
went ofi^ in a Mist, as usual; Shortest Day in a deep 
black Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all round like 
a hedge-hog. Two Vigils — so watchmen are called in 
heaven — saw Christmas Day safe home — they had been 
used to the business before. Another Vigil — a stout, 



OLD CHINA. 327 

sturdy patrole, called the Eve of St. CJa'isiopher — seeing 
Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he should 
be — e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, 
and Old Mortification went floating home singing — 

On the bat's back I do fly, 

and. a number of old snatches besides, between drunk and 
sober ; but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may 
believe me) were among them. Longest Bay set off" 
westward in beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, some 
in one fashion, some in another ; but Valentine and pretty 
May took their departure together in one of the prettiest 
silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in. 



OLD CHINA. 

I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china- 
closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend 
the order of preference, but by saying that we have all 
some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of 
our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. 
I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, 
that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time 
when china jars and saucers were introduced into my im- 
agination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now have % 
— to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, 
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- 
cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec- 
tive — a china tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot 
diminish — flguring up in the air (so they ajDpear to our 
optics), yet on terra firma still — for so we must in 
courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the 



328 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring 
up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if 
possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea 
to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance 
seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or 
another — for likeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping 
into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this 
calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in 
a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must 
infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — a 
furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their 
world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive — 
so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of 
fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our 
Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink un- 
mixed still of an afternoon), some of these s2yeciosa mir- 
acula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent 
purchase) which we were now for the first time using ; 
and could not help remarking, how favourable circum- 
stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford 
to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — 
when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows 
of my companion. I am quick at detecting these sum- 
mer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come again," she 
said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean 
that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state" — 
so she was pleased to ramble on, — •" in which I am sure 
we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a pur- 
chase, now that you have money enough and to spare. 
Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
cheap luxmy (and, ! how much ado I had to get you 
to consent in those times !) — we were used to have a 



OLD CHINA. 329 

debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and 
against, and think what we might spare it out of, and 
what saving we could hit upon, that shoidd be an equi- 
valent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt 
the money that we paid for it. 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon 
you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at 
night from Barker's in Oovent Garden 1 Do you remem- 
ber how we eyed it for weeks before we coidd make w]) 
our minds to the piu:chase, and had not come to a deter- 
mination till it was near ten o'clock of the Satiu-day 
night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should 
be too late — and when the old bookseller with some 
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper 
(for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from 
his dusty treasiu-es — and when you lugged it home, 
wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you 
presented it to me — and when we were exploring the 
perfectness of it [collating, you called it) — and while I 
was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which 
your impatience would not suffer to be left till day- break 
— was there no pleasure in being a poor man 1 or can 
those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so 
careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and 
finical — give you half the honest vanity with which you 
flaimted it about in that overworn suit — yoiu' old cor- 
beau — for four or five weeks longer than you should 
have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum 
of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was if? — ^a great affair 
we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old 
folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases 
you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any 
nice old purchases noAv. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for 
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after 
Lionardo, which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; ' 



330 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the 
money — and thought of the money, and looked again at 
the picture — was there no pleasure in being a poor man 1 
Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, 
and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you 1 

" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to 
Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a 
holyday— holydays and all other fun are gone now we 
are rich — and the little hand -basket in which I used to 
deposit our day's fare of savoury cold lamb and salad — ■ 
and how you. would pry about at noon -tide for some 
decent house, where we might go in and produce our 
store — only paying for the ale that you must call for — 
and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether 
she was likely to allow us a tablecloth — and wish for 
such another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has de- 
scribed many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, 
when he went a -fishing — and sometimes they would 
prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look 
grudgingly upon us — but we had cheerful looks still for 
one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, 
sca;rcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall 1 Now — 
when we go out a day's pleasiu^ing, which is seldom, 
moreover, we ride part of the way, and go into a fine 
inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the 
expense — which, after all, never has half the relish of 
those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy 
of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but 
in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to 
sit, when we saw the battle of Hexham, and the Sur- 
render of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the 
Children in the Wood — when we squeezed out our shil- 
lings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the 
one -shilling gallery — where you felt all the time that you 
ought not to have brought me— and more strongly I felt 
obligation to you for having brought me — and the pleasure 
was the better for a little shame — and when the curtain 



OLD CHINA. 331 

drew up, what cared we for our place iu the house, or 
what mattered it where we were sitting, when our 
thoughts were with Rosahnd in Arden, or with Viola at 
the Court of lUyria 1 You used to say that the Gallery 
was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially — 
that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion 
to the infrequency of going — that the company we met 
there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged 
to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going 
on, on the stage — because a word lost would have been 
a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. 
With such reflections we consoled our pride then — and I 
appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with 
less attention and accommodation than I have done since 
in more expensive situations in the house 1 The getting 
in, indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient stair- 
cases, was bad enough — but there was still a law of 
civility to woman recognized to quite as great an extent 
as we ever found in the other passages — and how a little 
difiiculty overcome heightened the snug seat and the 
play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay our money and 
walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries u'^w. 
I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — ;ibut 
sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before 
they became quite common- — in the first dish of peas, 
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice 
supper, a treat. What treat can we have now ? If we 
were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties a 
little above our means, it woidd be selfish and wicked. 
It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond 
what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call 
a treat — when two people, living together as we have 
done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, 
which both like ; while each apologizes, and is willing to 
take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see 
no harm in people making much of themselves, in that 
sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to 



332 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

make much of others. But now — what I mean by the 
word — -we never do make much of oiu'selves. None but 
the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of 
all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. 

" I know what you were going to say, that it is 
mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, 
— and much ado we used to have every Thirty -first 
Night of December to account for our exceedings — many 
a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and 
in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much — 
or that we had not spent so much — or that it was 
impossible we should spend so much next year — and 
still we foimd our slender capital decreasing — but then, 
■ — ^ betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one 
sort or another, and talk of ciu'tailing this charge, and 
doing without that for the future — and the hope that 
youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were 
never poor till now), we pocketed up om' loss, and in 
conclusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote 
it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), 
we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' Now we 
have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year — no 
flattering promises about the new year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 
how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling 
at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination 

had conjiu'ed up out of a clear income of poor 

hundred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier 
when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my 
cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for 
if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should 
not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle 
with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most 
thankful. It strengthened and knit oiu" comjiact closer. 
We could never have been what we have been to each 
other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you 
now complain of. The resisting power — those natural 



THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM. 333 

dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances 
cannot straiten — with us are long since passed away. 
Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry 
supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. 
We must ride where we formerly walked : live better 
and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so — than we 
had paeans to do in those good old days you speak of. 
Yet could those days return — could you and I once more 
walk our thirty miles a day — could Bannister and Mrs. 
Bland again be yoimg, and you and I be young to see 
them — could the good old one -shilling gallery days re- 
turn — they are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you 
and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by 
our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa — 
be once more straggling up those inconvenient staircases, 
pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
rabble of poor gallery scramblers — could I once more 
hear those anxious shrieks of yours — and the delicious 
Thanh God, we are safe, which always followed when 
the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the 
whole cheerful theatre down beneath us — I know not 
the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I 
would be willing to biuy more wealth in than Croesus 
had, or the great Jew E. — r— is supposed to have, to 
purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little 
Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a 
bed -tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half 
Madonna-isli chit of a lady in that very blue summer- 
house." 



THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM. 

I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing 
of a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I 
had been reading the " Loves of the Angels," and went 
to bed with my head full of speculations, suggested by 



334 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innu- 
merable conjectures ; and, I remember the last waking 
thought, which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a 
sort of wonder, "what could come of it." 

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could 
scarcely make out — but to some celestial region. It was 
not the real heavens neither — not the downright Bible 
heaven — but a kind of fairyland heaven, about which a 
poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, 
I mil hope, without presumption, 

Methought — what wild things dreams are ! — I was 
present — at what would you imagine ? — at an angel's 
gossiping. 

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, 
or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you 
nor I know — but there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its 
little cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel, 

Sun-threads — filmy beams — -ran through the celestial 
napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the 
winged orders hovered round, watching when the new 
born should open its yet closed eyes ; which, when it 
did, first one, and then the other — with a solicitude and 
apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dim the 
expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to explore 
its path in those its unhereditary palaces — what an inex- 
tinguishable titter that time spared not celestial visages ! 
Nor wanted there to my seeming — 0, the inexplicable 
simpleness of dreams ! — bowls of that cheering nectar, 

— which mortals caudle call below. 

Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, — stricken 
in years, as it might seem, — so dexterous were those 
heavenly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of 
earth, to greet with terrestrial child -rites the young 
present, which earth had made to heaven. 

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full sym- 
phony, as those by which the spheres are tutored ; but, 
as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled ; 



THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM. 335 

SO to accommodate their sound the better to the weak 
ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of these 
subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering 
its rudiments of pinions — but forthwith flagged and was 
recovered into the arms of those full -winged angels. 
And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in 
heaven — a year in dreams is as a day- — continually its 
white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but wanting the 
perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, 
and fell fluttering — still caught by angel hands, for ever 
to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its 
birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven. 

And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to 
be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth 
and heaven. 

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adop- 
tion into immortal palaces ; but it was to know weakness, 
and reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility ; and 
it went with a lame gait ; but in its goings it exceeded 
all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then pity 
first sprang up in angelic bosoms ; and yearnings (like 
the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal 
lame one. 

And with pain did then fii'st those Intuitive Essences, 
with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back 
their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, 
schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to 
adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must 
needs be) of the half- earth -born ; and what intuitive 
notices they cotdd not repel (by reason that their nature 
is, to know all things at once) the half-heavenly novice, 
by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its 
understanding ; so that Humility and Aspiration went on 
even-paced in the instruction of the glorious Amphibium. 

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to 
breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion 
was, and is, to be a child for ever. 

And because the human part of it might not press into 



336 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those 
full-natiired angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of 
the palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, like 
this green earth from which it came ; so Love, with 
Voluntary Humility, waited upon the entertainment of 
the new-adopted. 

And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is 
nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual child- 
hood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, 
and still goes lame and lovely. 

By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting 
by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel 
Nadir loved, a Child ; but not the same which I saw in 
heaven. A moiu-nful hue overcasts its lineaments ; never- 
theless, a correspondency is between the child by the grave, 
and that celestial orphan, whom I saw above ; and the 
dimness of the grief upon the heavenly, is a shadow or 
emblem of that which stains the beauty of the terrestrial. 
And this correspondency is not to be understood but by 
dreams. 

And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how 
that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for 
mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of parental love 
(such power had parental love for a moment to suspend 
the else-irrevocable law) appeared for a brief instant in 
his station, and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straightway 
disappeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And 
this charge was the self-same Babe, who goeth lame and 
lovely — but Adah sleepeth by the river Pison. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 

Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been 
the favourite tojiic of sober declaimers in all ages, and 
have been received with abundance of applause by water- 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 337 

drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man 
that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom 
prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the remedy- 
simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise 
the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis as easy as 
not to steal, not to tell lies. 

Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false 
witness, have no constitutional tendency. These are 
actions indifferent to them. At the first instance of the 
reformed will, they can be brought off without a murmm*. 
The itching finger is but a figure in speech, and the 
tongue of the liar can with the same natiural delight give 
forth useful truths with which it has been accustomed to 
scatter their pernicious contraries. But when a man has 
commenced sot 

pause, thou stiu^dy moralist, thou person of stout 
nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily untouched, 
and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which I had written, 
first learn what the thing is ; how much of compassion, 
how much of human allowance, thou mayest virtuously 
mingle with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the 
ruins of a man. Exact not, under so terrible a penalty 
as infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death almost 
as real as that from which Lazarus rose not but by a 
miracle. 

Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. 
But what if the beginning be dreadful, the first steps not 
like climbing a mountain but going through fire 1 what if 
the whole system must undergo a change violent as that 
which we conceive of the mutation of form in some insects ? 
what if a process comparable to flaying alive be to be 
gone through ? is the weakness that sinks under such 
struggles to be confounded with the pertinacity which 
clings to other vices, which have induced no constitutional 
necessity, no engagement of the whole victim, body and 
soul 1 

1 have known one in that state, when he has tried to 
abstain but for one evening, — ^though the poisonous potion 

z 



338 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

had long ceased to bring back its first enchantments, 
though he Avas sure it would rather deepen his gloom 
than brighten it, — in the violence of the struggle, and 
the necessity he had felt of getting rid of the present 
sensation at any rate, I have known him to scream out, 
to cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the strife within 
him. 

AVhy should I hesitate to declare, that the man of 
whom I speak is myself? I have no puling apology to 
make to mankind. I see them all in one way or another 
deviating from the i^iue reason. It is to my own nature 
alone I am accountable for the woe that I have brought 
upon it. 

I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads 
and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hm-t ; 
whom brandy (I have seen them drink it like wine), at 
all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a measure, 
can do no worse injury to than just to muddle their facul- 
ties, perhaps never very pellucid. On them this discourse 
is wasted. They woidd but laugh at a weak brother, 
who, trying his strength with them, and coming off foiled 
from the contest, woidd fain persuade them that such 
agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is to a very different 
description of persons I speak. It is to the weak — the 
nervous ; to those who feel the want of some artificial aid 
to raise their spirits in society to what is no more than 
the ordinary pitch of all around them without it. This 
is the secret of oiu: drinking. Siich must fly the convivial 
board in the first instance, if they do not mean to sell 
themselves for term of life. 

Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twentieth 
year. I had lived from the period of leaving school to 
that time j)retty much in solitude. My companions were 
chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of my 
own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to 
bed betimes, and the faculties which God had given me, 
I have reason to think, did not rust in me unused. 

About that time I fell in with some companions of a 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 339 

different order. They were men of boisterous spirits, 
sitters up a-uiglits, disputants, drunken ; yet seemed to 
have something noble about them. We dealt about the 
mt, or Avhat passes for it after midnight, jovially. Of 
the quality called fancy I certainly possessed a larger share 
than my companions. Encoiu'aged by their applause, I 
set up for a professed joker ! I, who of all men am least 
fitted for such an occupation, having, in addition to the 
greatest difficulty which I experience at all times of find- 
ing words to express my meaning, a natural nervous im- 
pediment in my speech ! 

Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire 
to any character but that of a wit. When you find a 
tickling relish upon your tongue disposing you to that 
sort of conversation, especially if you find a preternatural 
flow of ideas setting in upon you at the sight of a bottle 
and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to it as you would 
fiy yom' greatest destruction. If you cannot crush the 
power of fancy, or that within you which you mistake for 
such, divert it, give it some other play. Write an essay, 
pen a character or description, — but not as I do now, 
"svith tears trickling down joixr cheeks. 

To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision 
to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared at by fools ; 
to be esteemed dull when you cannot be witty, to be ap- 
plauded for witty when you know that you have been 
dull ; to be called upon for the extemporaneous exercise 
of that faculty which no premeditation can give ; to be 
spurred on to efforts which end in contempt ; to be set 
on to provoke mirth which procures the prociu'er hatred ; 
to give pleasm-e and be paid with squinting malice ; 
to swallow draughts of life-destroying mne which are to 
be distilled into airy breath to tickle vain auditors ; to 
mortgage miserable morrows for nights of madness ; to 
waste whole seas of time upon those who pay it back in 
little inconsiderable drops of grudging applause, — are the 
wages of buffoonery and death. 

Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all con- 



340 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

nections wliich have no solider fastening than this liquid 
cement, more kind to me than my own taste or penetra- 
tion, at length opened my eyes to the sui^posed qualities 
of my first friends. No trace of them is left but in the 
vices which they introduced, and the habits they infixed. 
In them my friends survive still, and exercise ample re- 
tribution for any supposed infidelity that I may have been 
guilty of towards them. 

My next more immediate companions were and are 
persons of such intrinsic and felt worth, that though 
accidentally their acquaintance has proved pernicious to 
me, I do not know that if the thing were to do over again, I 
should have the courage to eschew the mischief at the price 
of forfeiting the benefit. I came to them reeking from the 
steams of my late over-heated notions of companionship ; 
and the slightest fuel which they unconsciously afforded, 
was sufficient to feed my own fires into a propensity. 

They were no drinkers ; but, one from professional 
habits, and another from a custom derived from his father, 
smoked tobacco. The devil could not have devised a 
more subtle trap to re-take a backsliding penitent. The 
transition, from gulping down draughts of liquid fire to 
puffing out innocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like 
cheating him. But he is too hard for us when we hope 
to commute. He beats us at barter ; and when we think 
to set off a new failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds 
but he puts the trick upon us of two for one. That 
(comparatively) white devil of tobacco brought with him 
in the end seven worse than himself. 

It were impertinent to carry the reader through all 
the processes by which, from smoking at first with malt 
liquor, I took my degrees through thin wines, through 
stronger wine and water, through small pimch, to those 
juggling compositions, which, under the name of mixed 
liquors, slur a great deal of brandy or other poison under 
less and less water continually, until they come next to 
none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful to disclose 
the secrets of my Tartarus. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 341 

I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of 
believing me, were I to teU them what tobacco has been 
to me, the drudging service which I have paid, the slavery 
which I have vowed to it. How, when I have resolved 
to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started up ; how 
it has put on personal claims and made the demands of a 
friefld upon me. How the reading of it casually in a 
book, as where Adams takes his whiff in the chimney- 
corner of some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the 
Complete Angler breaks his fast upon a morning pipe in 
that delicate room Fiscatoribus Sacrum, has in a moment 
broken down the resistance of weeks. How a pipe M^as 
ever in my midnight path before me, till the vision forced 
me to realise it, — how then its ascending vapours curled, 
its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious minister- 
ings conversant about it, emjiloying every faculty, ex- 
tracted the sense of pain. How from illuminating it 
came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a nega- 
tive relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, 
thence to a positive misery. How, even now, when the 
whole secret stands confessed in all its dreadful truth 
before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond the power of 
revocation. Bone of my bone 

Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of 
their actions, to reckon up the countless nails that rivet 
the chains of habit, or perhaps being bound by none so 
obdurate as those I have confessed to, may recoil from 
this as from an overcharged picture. But what short of 
such a bondage is it, which in spite of protesting friends, 
a weeping wife, and a reprobating world, chains down 
many a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to good- 
ness, to his pipe and his pot ? 

I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three 
female figures are ministering to a man who sits fast boiind 
at the root of a tree. Sensuality is soothing him. Evil 
Habit is nailing him to a branch, and Repugnance at the 
same instant of time is applying a snake to his side. In 
his face is feeble delight, the recollection of past rather 



342 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

than perception of present pleasures, languid enjoyment 
of evil with utter imbecility to good, a Sybaritic effemi- 
nacy, a submission to bondage, the springs of the will 
gone down like a broken clock, the sin and the suffering 
CO -instantaneous, or the latter forerunning the former, 
remorse preceding action — all this represented in one 
point of time. — "When I saw this, I admired the wonder- 
ful skill of the painter. But when I went away, I wept, 
because I thought of my own condition. 

Of that there is no hope that it should ever change. 
The waters have gone over me. But out of the black 
depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those 
who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the 
youth, to whom the flavour of his first wine is delicious 
as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon some 
newly-discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and 
be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a 
man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open 
eyes and a passive will, — to see his destruction and have 
no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way ema- 
nating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out 
of him, and yet not to be able to forget a time when it 
was otherwise ; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his 
own self-ruins : — could he see my fevered eye, feverish 
with last night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this 
night's repetition of the folly ; could he feel the body of 
the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and 
feebler outcry to be delivered, — it were enough to make 
him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the 
pride of its mantling temptation ; to make him clasp his 
teeth, 

and Bot imdo 'em 
To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em. 

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if sobriety 
be that fine thing you would have us to understand, if 
the comforts of a cool brain are to be preferred to that 
state of heated excitement which you describe and deplore, 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 343 

what hinders in your instance that you do not return to 
those habits from which you would induce others never 
to swerve 1 if the blessing be worth preserving, is it not 
worth recovering 1 

Recovering ! — if a wish could transport me back to 
those days of youth, when a draught from the next clear 
spring could slake any heats which summer suns and 
youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood, how 
gladly would I retiu-n to thee, pure element, the drink of 
children and of child-like holy hermit ! In my dreams I 
can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment purling over my 
burning tongue. But my waking stomach rejects it. That 
which refreshes innocence only makes me sick and faint. 

But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence 
and the excess which kills you % — For yom- sake, reader, 
and that you may never attain to my experience, with 
pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that there is none, 
none that I can find. In my stage of habit (I speak not 
of habits less confirmed — for some of them I believe the 
advice to be most prudential), in the stage which I have 
reached, to stop short of that measure which is sufficient 
to draw on torpor and sleep, the benumbing apoijlectic 
sleep of the drunkard, is to have taken none at all. The 
pain of the self-denial is all one. And what that is, I had 
rather the reader should believe on my credit, than know 
from his own trial. He will come to know it, whenever 
he shall arrive in that state in which, paradoxical as it 
may appear, reason shall only visit him through intoxica- 
tion ; for it is a fearfiil truth, that the intellectual facul- 
ties by repeated acts of intemperance may be driven from 
their orderly sphere of action, their clear daylight minis- 
teries, until they shall be brought at last to depend, for 
the faint manifestation of their departing energies, upon 
the returning periods of the fatal madness to which they 
owe their devastation. The drinking man is never less 
himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far 
his good.'^ 

1 When poor M painted his last picture, with a pencil in 



344 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced 
to imbecility and decay. Hear me count my gains, and 
the profits which I have derived from the midnight cup. 

Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy frame 
of mind and body. I was never strong, but I think my 
constitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt from 
the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be. I 
scarce knew what it was to ail anything. Now, except 
when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never 
free from those uneasy sensations in head and stomach, 
which are so much worse to bear than any definite pains 
or aches. 

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the 
morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and 
seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or some 
piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. Now, the 
first feeling which besets me, after stretching out the 
hours of recumbence to their last possible extent, is a 
forecast of the wearisome day that lies before me, with a 
secret wish that I could have lain on still, or never 
awaked. 

Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, 
the trouble, and obscure perplexity, of an ill dream. In 
the day-time I stumble upon dark mountains. 

Business, which, though never very particularly adapted 
to my nature, yet as something of necessity to be gone 
through, and therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, 
I used to enter upon with some degree of alacrity, now 
wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of dis- 
couragements, and am ready to give up an occupation 
which gives me bread, from a harassing conceit of inca- 
pacity. The slightest commission given me by a friend, 
or any small duty which I have to perform for myself, as 

one trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and "vvater in the other, 
his fingers owed the comparative steadiness with which they were 
enabled to go through their task in an imperfect manner, to a 
temporary firmness derived from a repetition of practices, the 
general effect of which had shaken both theui and him so terribly. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 345 

giving orders to a tradesman, etc., haniits me as a labour 
impossible to be got through. So much the springs of 
action are broken. 

The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse 
with mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's hon- 
our, or his cause, would be safe in my keeping, if I were 
put to the expense of any manly resolution in defending 
it. So much the springs of moral action are deadened 
within me. 

My favourite occupations in times past now cease to 
entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application for 
ever so short a time kills me. This poor abstract of my 
condition was penned at long intervals, with scarcely an 
attempt at connexion of thought, which is now difficult 
to me. 

The noble passages which formerly delighted me in 
liistory or poetic fiction now only draw a few tears, allied 
to dotage. My broken and dispirited nature seems to 
sink before anything great and admirable. 

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or 
none. It is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds 
to a sense of shame, and a general feeling of deterioration. 

These are some of the instances, concerning which I 
can say with truth, that it was not always so with me. 

Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further 1 
— or is this disclosure sufficient 1 

I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to 
consult by these Confessions. I know not whether I shall 
be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they are, I 
commend them to the reader's attention, if he find his 
own case any way touched. I have told him what I am 
come to. Let him stop in time. 



346 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

POPULAR FALLACIES. 

I, — THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. 

This axiom contains a principle of compensation, which 
disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there is no 
safe trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We should 
more willingly fall in with this popular language, if we 
did not find hnitality sometimes awkwardly coupled with 
valour in the same vocabulary. The comic writers, with 
their poetical justice, have contributed not a little to 
mislead us upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow 
exposed and beaten upon the stage, has something in it 
wonderfully diverting. Some people's share of animal 
spirits is notoriously low and defective. It has not 
strength to raise a vapour, or furnish out the wind of a 
tolerable bluster. These love to be told that hufiing is 
no part of valom\ (The truest courage with them is that 
which is the least noisy and obtrusive.\ But confront 
one of these sUent heroes with the swaggerer of real life, 
and his confidence in the theory quickly vanishes. T Pre- 
tensions do not uniformly bespeak non-performanc^ A 
modest, inoffensive deportment does not necessarily miply\ 
valour ; neither does the absence of it justify us in deny-» 
ing that quality. Hickman wanted modesty — we do 
not mean Mm of Clarissa — but who ever doubted his 
courage'? Even the poets — upon whom this equitable 
distribution of qualities should be most binding — have 
thought it agreeable to nature to depart from the rule 
upon occasion. Harapha, in the "Agonistes," is indeed 
a bully upon the received notions. Milton has made him 
at once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, 
in Dryden, talks of driving armies singly before him — and 
does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder insight into this 
kind of character than either of his predecessors. He 
divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero a sort 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 347 

of dimidiate pre-eminence : — " Bully Dawson kicked by 
half the town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." 
(^This was true distributive justice./ 



II. — THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN" NEVEE PROSPERS. 

TkE weakest part of mankind have this saying commonest 
in their mouth. It is the trite consolation administered 
to the easy dupe, when he has been tricked out of his 
money or estate, that the acquisition of it will do the 
owner no good. But the rogues of this world — the 
prudenter part of them at least, — know better ; and if 
the observation had been as true as it is old, woidd not 
have failed by this time to have discovered it. They 
have pretty sharp distinctions of the fluctuating and the 
permanent. "Lightly come, lightly go," is a proverb 
which they can very well afford to leave, when they leave 
little else, to the losers. They do not always find manors, 
got by rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt away as 
the poets will have it ; or that all gold glides, like thaw- 
ing snow, from the thief's hand that grasps it. Church 
land, alienated to lay uses, was formerly denounced to 
have this slippery quality. But some portions of it 
somehow always stuck so fast, that the denunciators 
have been fain to postpone the prophecy of refundment 
to a late posterity^- 



IIL — THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST. 

I The severest exaction surely ever invented upon the self- 
denial of poor human nature ! This is to expect a gentle- 
man to give a treat without partaking of it ; to sit 
esurient at his own table, and commend the flavour of 
his venison upon the absiuxl strength of his never touch- 
ing it himself On the contrary, we love to see a wag 
taste his own joke to his party ; to watch a quirk or a 
merry conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds before 



348 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and 
racy — ^begotten of the occasion ; if he that titters it never 
thought it before, he is natiu'ally the first to be tickled 
with it, and any sui^pression of such complacence we hold 
to be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to imply 
but that your company is weak or foolish to be moved 
by an image or a fancy, that shall stir you not at all, or 
but faintly? This is exactly the humour of the fine 
gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he dazzles his guests 
with the display of some costly toy, affects himself to " see 
nothing considerable in it." 



IV. — THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BEEEDING. — THAT 
IT IS EASY TO PEECEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN. 

A SPEECH from the poorest sort of people, which always 
indicates that the party vituperated is a gentleman. The 
very fact which they deny, is that which galls and exas- 
perates them to use this language. The forbearance with 
which it is usually received is a proof what interpretation 
the bystander sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still 
less politic, are the phrases with which, in their street 
rhetoric, they ply one another more grossly; — He is a 

poor creature. — He has not a rag to cover etc.; 

though this last, we confess, is more frequently applied 
by females to females. They do not perceive that the 
satire glances upon themselves, y^ poor man, of all things 
in the world, should not upbraid an antagonist with 
poverty. "^Are there no other topics — as, to tell him his 
father was hanged — his sister, etc.- — — without exposing 
a secret which should be kept snug between them ; and 
doing an affront to the order to which they have the 
honour equally to belong ? All this while they do not 
see how the wealthier man stands by and laughs in his 
sleeve at both. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 349 



V. THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH. 

A SMOOTH text to the latter ; and, preached from the 
pulpit, is sure of a docile audience from the pews lined 
with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish 
squire to be told that he — and not perverse natiire, as the 
homilies would make us imagine, is the true cause of all 
the UTegularities in his parish. This is striking at the 
root of free-will indeed, and denying the originality of sin 
in any sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as 
this comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of 
the upper classes is to derive itself from no higher prin- 
ciple than the apprehension of setting ill patterns to the 
lower, we beg leave to discharge them from all squeamish- 
ness on that score : they may even take their fill of 
pleasm'es, where they can find them. The Genius ofv 
Poverty, hampered and straitened as it is, is not sol 
barren of invention but it can trade upon the staple of its 
own vice, without drawing upon their capital. The poor 
are not quite such servile imitators as they take them for. 
Some of them are very clever artists in their way. Here 
and there, we find an original. Who taught the poor to 
steal — to pilfer % They did not go to the great for school- 
masters in these faculties, siu-ely. It is well if in some 
vices they allow us to be — no cojDyists. In no other 
sense is it true that the poor copy them, than as servants 
may be said to iaJce after their masters and mistresses, 
when they succeed to their reversionary cold meats. It 
the master, from indisposition, or some other cause, 
neglect his food, the servant dines notwithstanding. 

" 0, but (some will say) the force of example is great." 
We knew a lady who was so scrupulous on this head, that 
she woidd put up with the calls of the most impertinent 
visitor, rather than let her servant say she was not at 
home, for fear of teaching her maid to teU an untruth ; 
and this in the very face of the fact, which she knew well 
enough, that the wench was one of the greatest liars upon 



350 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the earth without teaching ; so much so, that her mistress 
possibly never heard two words of consecutive trutli from 
her in her life. But nature must go for nothing ; exj 
ample must be everything. This liar in grain, who never 
opened her mouth without a lie, must be guarded against 
a remote inference, which she (pretty casuist !) might 
possibly draw from a form of words — literally false, but 
essentially deceiving no one — that under some circum- 
stances a fib might not be so exceedingly sinful — a fiction, 
too, not at all in her own way, or one that she could be 
suspected of adopting, for few servant-wenches care to be 
denied to visitors. 

This word examiile reminds us of another fine Avord 
which is in use upon these occasions — encouragement. 
" PeoiDle in oiir sphere must not be thought to give en- 
couragement to such proceedings." To such a frantic 
height is this princij)le capable of being carried, that we 
have known individuals who have thought it within the 
scope of their influence to sanction despair, and give eclat 
to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a county mem- 
ber lately deceased, from love, or some unknown cause, 
cut his throat, but not successfiilly. The poor fellow was 
otherwise much loved and respected ; and great interest 
was used in his behalf, upon his recovery, that he might 
be permitted to retain his place; his word being first 
pledged, not without some substantial sponsors to promise 
for him, that the like should never happen again. His 
master was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress 
thought otherwise ; and John in the end was dismissed, 
her ladyship declaring that she " could not think of en- 
couraging any such doings in the county." 

VI. — THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 

Not a man, Avoman, or child, in ten miles round Guild- 
hall, who really believes this saying. The inventor of it 
did not believe it himself. It was made in revenge by 
somebody, who was disappointed of a regale. It is a 



' POPULAR FALLACIES. 351 

vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism ; a lie palmed upon the 
palate, which knows better things. If nothing else 
could be said for a feast, this is sufficient — that from the 
superflux there is usually something left for the next 
day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of pro- 
verbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue 
money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that 
mOney is not health ; riches cannot purchase everything : 
the metaphor which makes gold to be mere muck, with 
the morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's 
back, and denoimces pearl as the unhandsome excretion 
of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes dirt 
to acres — a sojihistry so barefaced, that even the literal 
sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abun- 
dance of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, 
we verily believe to have been the invention of some 
cunning borrower, who had designs upon the purse of 
his wealthier neighbour, Avhich he could only hope to 
carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any 
one of these sayings out of the artful metonymy which 
envelopes it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and 
shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, 
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independ-. 
ence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not] 
muck — however we may be pleased to scandalise with that' 
ajipellation the faithful metal that provides them for us. 

VII. — OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY 
IN THE WRONG. 

Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite con- . 
elusion. (Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ) but warmth 
and earnestness are a proof at least of a man's own con- 
viction of the rectitude of that which he maintains. 
jCoolness is as often the result of an imprincij^led indiffer- 
llence to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a 
man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting 
sometimes than the appearance of this philosophic tern- 



352 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

per. There is little Titubus, the stammering law- 
stationer in Lincoln's Inn — we have seldom known this 
shrewd little fellow engaged in an argument where we 
were not convinced he had the best of it, if his tongue 
would but fairly have seconded him. When he has been 
spluttering excellent broken sense for an hour together, 
writhing and labouring to be delivered of the point of 
dispute — the very gist of the controversy knocking at\ 
his teeth, which like some obstinate iron -grating stilr 
obstructed its deliverance — his puny frame convulsed, 
and face reddening all over at an imfairness in the 
logic which he wanted articidation to expose, it has 
moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an 
adversary, that cared not a button for the merits of 
the question, by merely laying his hand upon the head 
of the stationer, and desiring him to be calm (your 
tall disputants have always the advantage), with a 
provoking sneer (farry the argument clean from him in 
the opinion of all the bystanders, who have gone away 
clearly convinced that Titubus must have been in the 

wrong, because he was in a passion ; and that Mr. , 

meaning his opponent, is one of the fairest and at the same 
time one of the most dispassionate arguers breathing. 

VIII. — THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS AEE NOT WIT, BECAUSE 
THEY WILL NOT BEAK A TEANSLATION. 

The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions. 
A custom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner 
as a pun. What would become of a great part of the 
wit of the last age, if it were tried by this test ? How 
would certain topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have 
sounded to a Terentian auditory, though Terence himself 
had been alive to translate them 1 Senator urbanus with 
Curruca to boot for a synonym, would but faintly have 
done the business. Words, involving notions, are hard 
enough to render ; it is too much to expect us to trans- 
late a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 353 

The Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by sub- 
stituting harmonious sounds in another language for it. 
To Latinise a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin that will 
answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the double endings 
in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar practice 
in old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest oppugner 
of puns in ancient or modern times, professes himself 
highly tickled with the " a stick," chiming to " eccle- 
siastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, a verbal 
consonance ? 

VX. THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and 
startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the\ 
laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at tha 
ear ; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an antic 
which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding 
into the presence, and does not show the less comic for 
being dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders.. 
What though it limp a little, or prove defective in one 
leg 1 — all the better. A pun may easily be too curious 
and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been 
at a party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender 
in that line), where, after ringing a round of the most in- 
genious conceits, every man contributing his shot, and 
some there the most expert shooters of the day ; after 
making a poor word run the gaimtlet till it is ready to 
drop ; after hunting and winding it through all the 
possible ambages of similar sounds ; after squeezing, and 
hauling, and tugging at it, till the very milk of it will 
not yield a drop further, — suddenly some obscm-e, un- 
thought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice to 
the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, 
as we do by a known poor man when a money-subscrip- 
tion is going round, no one calling upon him for his 
quota — ^has all at once come out with something so 
whimsical, yet so pertinent ; so brazen in its pretensions, 
2 A 



354 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

yet so impossible to be denied ; so exquisitely good, and 
so deplorably bad, at the same time, — that it has proved a 
Robin Hood's shot ; anything ulterior to that is despaired 
of; and the jDarty breaks up, imanimously voting it to be 

sjthe very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. This 
species of wit is the better for not being perfect in all its 
parts. JWhat it gains in completeness, it loses in natural- 
ness. .The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less 
hold it nas upon some other faculties.) The puns which 
are most entertaining are those which will least bear an 

^nalysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded with a 
s^t of stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies. 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying 
a hare through the streets, accosts him with this extra- 
ordinary question : " Prithee, friend, is that thy own hair 
or a wig'?" 

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man 
might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defence of 
it against a critic who should be laughter -proof The 
quibble in itself is not considerable. It is only a new 
turn given by a little false pronunciation to a very com- 
mon though not very courteous inquiry. Put by one 
gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it would have 
been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it would have 
shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take in 
the totality of time, place, and person ; the pert look of 
the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled 
porter : the one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying 
on vsdth his burden ; the innocent though rather abrupt 
tendency of the first member of the question, with the 
utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second ; the 
place — a public street, not favourable to frivolous investi- 
gations ; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry 
(the common question) invidiously transferred to the 
derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied 
satire ; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to 
eat of .the good things which they carry, they being in 
most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees 



POPUIAR FALLACIES. 355 

than owners of sucli dainties, — which the fellow was 
beginning to understand ; but then the wig again comes 
in, and he can make nothing of it ; all put together con- 
stitute a picture : Hogarth could have made it intel- 
ligible on canvas. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very- 
bad ^un, because of the defectiveness in the concluding 
member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the 
surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable 
the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona ; ^ 
because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves nothing 
to the imagination. We venture to call it cold ; be- 
cause, of thousands who have admired it, it would be 
difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As 
appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible 
faculty aside), we must pronounce it a monument of 
curious felicity. But as some stories are said to be too 
good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of 
this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natm-al. 
One cannot help suspecting that the incident was in- 
vented to fit the line. It would have been better had it 
been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it 
has suff'ered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was 
enough in conscience ; the CremoncB afterwards loads it. 
It is, in fact, a double pun; and we have always ob- 
served that a superfoetation in this sort of wit is dangerous. 
When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic 
to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second 
time ; or, perhaps the mind of man (with reverence be it 
spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a 
time. The impression, to be forcible, must be simul- 
taneous and undivided. 



X.^ — THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. 

Those who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. 
Conrady. 

1 Swift. 



,356 THE. ESSAYS OF ELI A, 

The soul, if we may believe Plotimis, is a ray from the 
celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this 
heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding char- 
acters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames 
to herself a suitable mansion. 

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, 
in her pre-existent state, was no great judge of archi- 
tecture. 

To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, 
divine Spenser platonising sings : — 

Every spirit as it is more piire, 



And hath, in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For of the soul the body form doth take : 
For soiil is form, and doth the body make. 

But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Oonrady. 

These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy ; 
for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving 
clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves us as 
much to seek as ever : — 

Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
Either by chance, against the course of kind, 
Or through unaptness in the substance found, 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground. 
That will not yield unto her form's direction, 
But is performed with some foul imiierfection. 

From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen some- 
body like Mrs. Conrady. 

The spirit of this good lady — her previous anima — 
must have stumbled upon one of these untoward taber- 
nacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious com- 
modity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no 
gentle mind — and sure hers is one of the gentlest — ever 
had to deal with. 

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage— inexplicable, 
we mean, but by this modification of tlie theory — we 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 357 

have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it 
is better to be i^lain all over, than amidst a tolerable 
residue of features to hang out one that shall be excep- 
tionable. No one can say of Mrs. Conrady's countenance 
that it would be better if she had but a nose. It is im- 
possible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We have 
seen,the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled 
in the attempt at a selection. The tout-ensemble defies 
particularizing. It is too complete — too consistent, as 
we may say — to admit of these invidious reservations. 
It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip — 
and there a chin — out of the collected ugliness of Greece, 
to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We 
challenge the minutest connoisseiu' to cavil at any part or 
parcel of the countenance in question ; to say that this, 
or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that 
true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of tnie beauty, is 
the residt of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns without 
a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady without 
pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever 
met with in the coiu'se of his life. The first time that 
you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in 
your existence ever after. You are glad to have seen it 
— like Stonehenge. No one can pretend to forget it. No 
one ever apologised to her for meeting her in the street 
on such a day and not knowing her : the pretext would 
be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for another. No- 
body can say of her, " I think I have seen that face some- 
where, but I cannot call to mind where." You must 
remember that in such a parlour it first struck you — like 
a bust. You wondered where the owner of the house 
had picked it up. You wondered more when it began to 
move its lips — so mildly too ! No one ever thought of 
asking her to sit for her picture. Lockets are for remem- 
brance ; and it would be clearly superfluous to hang an 
image at your heart, which, once seen, can never be out 
of it. It is not a mean face either ; its entire originality 
precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces 



358 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

which improve upon acquaiutance. Some very good but 
ordinary people, by an unwearied perseverance in good 
offices, put a cheat upon our eyes ; juggle our senses out 
of their natural impressions ; and set us upon discovering 
good indications in a countenance, which at first sight 
promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which had 
escaped us, lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. 
Conrady has done you a service, her face remains the 
same ; when she has done you a thousand, and you know 
that she is ready to double the number, still it is that 
individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it would 
be a good face if it were not marked by the small-pox — a 
compliment which is always more admissive than excusa- 
tory — for either Mrs. Conrady never had the small-pox ; 
or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own 
merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token : 
that which she is known by. 

'V^I. THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HOESE IN 

THE MOUTH : 

Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope we 
have more delicacy than to do either; but some faces 
spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries. And what 
if the beast, which my friend would force upon my ac- 
ceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry Rosinante, a 
lean, ill-favoured jade, whom no gentleman could think 
of setting up in his stables 1 Must I, rather than not be 
obliged to my friend, make her a companion to Eclipse or 
Lightfoot 1 A horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller, 
has a right to palm his spavined article upon us for good 
ware. An equivalent is expected in either case; and, 
with my own good-wiU, I could no more be cheated out 
of my thanks than out of my money. Q^Some people have 
a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to 
engage you to substantial gratitude. ) We thank them for 
nothing. Oiu" friend Mitis carries this humour of never 
refusing a present to the very point of absurdity — if it 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 359 

were iDossible to couple the ridiculous with so much mis- 
taken delicacy and real good-nature. Not an apartment 
in his fine house (and he has a true taste in household 
decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous 
print or mirror — the worst adapted to his panels that 
may be — the presents of his friends that know his weak- 
ness • while his noble Vandykes are displaced to make 
room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched artist 
of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon 
his hands for bad likenesses, finds his account in bestow- 
ing them here gratis. The good creature has not the 
heart to mortify the painter at the expense of an honest 
refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at the same 
time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour, surrounded 
with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, 
while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own 
honourable family, in favour to these adopted frights, are 
consigned to the staircase and the lumber-room. In like 
manner, his goodly shelves are one by one stripped of his 
favourite old authors, to give place to a collection of pre- 
sentation copies — the flour and bran of modern poetry. 
A presentation coj^y, reader — if haply you are yet innocent 
of such favours — is a copy of a book which does not sell, 
sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the 
beginning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he only demands 
your friendship ; if a brother author, he expects from you 
a book of yours, which does sell, in return. We can 
speak to experience, having by us a tolerable assortment 
of these gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death — 
we are willing to acknowledge that in some gifts there is 
sense. A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he 
has more than one copy of a rare ' author) is intelligible. 
There are favours, short of the pecuniary — a thing not 
fit to be hinted at among gentlemen — which confer as 
much grace upon the acceptor as the offerer ; the kind, 
we confess, which is most to our palate, is of those little 
conciliatory missives, which for their vehicle generally 
choose a hamper — little odd presents of game, fruit, per- 



360 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

haps wine — though it is essential to the delicacy of the 
latter, that it be home-made. We love to have our friend 
in the country sitting thus at our table by proxy ; to 
apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be 
between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects to 
us his "plump corpusculum ;" to taste him in grouse or 
woodcock ; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar 
to the latter ; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury 
brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves ; to 
know him intimately : such participation is methinks 
unitive, as the old theologians phrase it. For these con- 
siderations we should be sorry if certain restrictive regula- 
tions, which are thought to bear hard upon the peasantry 
of this country, were entirely done away with. A hare, 
as the law now stands, makes many friends. Caius con- 
ciliates Titius (knowing his goitl) with a leash of partridges. 
Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes them to 
Lucius ; who, in his tm-n, preferring his friend's relish to 
his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their ever- 
widening progress, and round of unconscious circum- 
migration, they distribute the seeds of harmony over half 
a parish. We are well-disposed to this kind of sensible 
remembrances ; and are the less apt to be taken by those 
little airy tokens — impalpable to the palate — which, under 
the names of rings, lockets, keepsakes, amuse some people's 
fancy mightily. We could never away with these indi- 
gestible trifles. They are the very kickshaws and foppery 
of friendship. 

XII. -^HAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER 
SO HOMELY. 

Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; the 
home of the very poor man, and another which Ave shall 
speak to jDresently. Crowded places of cheap entertain- 
ment, and the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, 
might bear mournful testimony to the first. To them 
the very poor man resorts for an image of the home which 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 361 

he cannot find at home. For a starved grate, and a 
scanty firmg, that is not enough to keep alive the natural 
heat in the fingers of so many shivering children "with 
their mother, he finds in the depths of winter always a 
blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer 
bv. Instead of the clamours of a wife, made gaimt by 
famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance beyond 
the merits of the trifle which he can afford to spend. 
He has companions which his home denies him, for the 
very poor man has no visitors. He can look into the 
goings on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At 
home there are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All 
interests, real or imaginary, all topics that shoidd expand 
the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy with 
general existence, are crushed in the absorbing considera- 
tion of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the 
price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At 
home there is no larder. Here there is at least a show 
of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's 
meat before the common bars, or munches his humbler 
cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an onion, 
in a corner, where no one reflects upon his poverty, he 
has a sight of the substantial joint jiroviding for the 
landlord and his family. He takes an interest in the 
dressing of it ; and while he assists in removing the trivet 
from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as beef 
and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. 
All this while he deserts his wife and children. But 
Avhat wife, and what children ! Prosperous men, who 
object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean 
contented family like that which they go home to. But 
look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and 
persecute their good-man to the door of the public-house, 
which he is about to enter, when something like shame 
would restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce him 
to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in 
which every cheerful, every conversable lineament has 
been long effaced by misery, — is that a face to stay at 



362 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

home with ? is it more a womiui, or a wild cat ? alas ! it 
is the face of the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon 
him. It can smile no longer. What comforts can it 
share "? what burthens can it lighten ? Oh, 'tis a fine 
thing to talk of the humble meal shared together ! But 
what if there be no bread in the cupboard 1 The innocent 
prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's 
poverty, f But the children of the veiy poor do not prattle. 
It is none of the least frightful features in that condition, 
that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, 
said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their 
children ; they drag them \xp. 

The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in 
their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature re- 
flecting person. No one has time to dandle it, no one 
thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it 
up and down, to humour it. There is none to kiss away 
its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It has been 
prettily said, that " a babe is fed with milk and praise." 
But the aliment of this poor babe was thin,, unnoimshing ; 
the return to its little baby tricks, and efforts to engage 
attention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had a 
toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without 
the lullaby of nurses, it was a stranger to the patient 
fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the 
costlier plaything, or the cheaper ofi-hand contrivance to 
divert the chUd ; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), 
the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story 
interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and 
awakens the passions of young wonder. It was never 
sung to — no one ever told to it a tale of the niursery. It 
was dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. It had 
no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities 
of life. A child exists not for the very poor as any ob- 
ject of dalliance ; it is only another mouth to be fed, a 
pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is 
, the rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with the 
<a parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace : 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 363 

it never makes him yomig again, with recalling his young 
times. The children of the very poor have no young 
times. It makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the 
casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little 
girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition 
rather above the squalid beings which w^e have -been 
contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, 
ot summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of the promised 
sight, or play ; of praised sufiiciency at school. It is of 
mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of 
potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the 
very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with 
forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a 
woman, — before it was a child. It has learned to go to 
market ; it chafi^ers, it haggles, it envies, it murmiu-s ; it is 
knowing, acute, sharpened ; it never prattles. Had we notr 
reason to say that the home of the very poor is no home ¥ 

There is yet another home, which we are constrained 
to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home of 
the poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which 
the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no home. 
It is — the house of a man that is infested with many 
visitors. May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we 
deny our heart to the many noble-hearted friends that at 
times exchange their dwelling for oiu- poor roof ! It is 
not of guests that we complain, but of endless, purpose- 
less visitants ; droppers-in, as they are called. We some- 
times wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very 
error of the position of our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill 
calcidated, being just situate in a medium — a plaguy 
suburban mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or 
coimtry. We are older than we were, and age is easily 
put out of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to 
reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see them drop in 
endlessly succeeding impertinences. At our time of life, 
to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the 
refreshing sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of 
age manifest themselves in nothing more strongly than in 



364 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

an inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing which 
we are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We have 
neither much knowledge nor devices ; but there are few^er 
in the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly- 
put out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While 
youth was, we had vast reversions in time future ; we 
are reduced to a present pittance, and obliged to econo- 
mise in that article. We bleed away our moments now 
as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our 
thin wardrobe eaten and fretted into by moths. We are 
willing to barter our good time with a friend, who gives 
us in exchange his own. Herein is the distinction be- 
tween the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter 
takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. 
The guest is domestic to you as your good cat, or house- 
hold bird ; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at yoiu 
window and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of dis- 
turbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of 
life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our food 
with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must 
be solitary. With difficulty we can eat before a guest ; 
and never understood what the relish of public feasting 
meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair play, in 
a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a visitant stops 
the machine. There is a punctual generation who time 
their calls to the precise commencement of your dining- 
hour — not to eat — but to see you eat. Our knife and 
fork drop instinctively, and we feel that we have swallowed 
our latest morsel. Others again show their genius, as we 
have said, in knocking the moment you have just sat 
down to a book. They have a peculiar compassionate 
sneer, with which they " hope that they do not interrupt 
your studies." Though they flutter off' the next moment, 
to carry their impertinences to the nearest student that 
they can call their friend, the tone of the book is spoiled ; 
we shut the leaves, and with Dante's lovers, read no more 
that day. It were well if the effect of intrusion were 
simply coextensive with its presence, but it mars all the 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 365 

good hours afterwards. These scratches in appearance 
leave an orifice that closes not hastily. "It is a prosti- 
tution of the bravery of friendship," says worthy Bishop 
Taylor, " to spend it upon impertinent people, who are, 
it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my 
loads." This is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, 
and morning calls. They too have homes, which are — 
no homes. 

XIII. THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG. 

" Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most willingly 
embrace the offer of yoiu* friendship. We have long 
known your excellent qualities. We have wished to have 
you nearer to us ; to hold you within the very innermost 
fold of our heart. We can have no reserve towards a 
l^erson of your open and noble nature. The frankness of 
your humour suits us exactly. We have been long look- 
ing for such a friend. Quick — let us disburthen our 
troubles into each other's bosom — let us make our single 
joys shine by reduplication. — But yap, yap, yap ! what 
is this confoimded cur % he has fastened his tooth, which 
is none of the bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 

" It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. 
Here, Test— Test— Test !" 

" But he has bitten me." 

" Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better acquainted 
with him. I have had him three years. He never bites me." 

Ya-p, yap, yap ! — " He is at it again." 

" Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like 
to be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated mth all the 
respect due to myself." 

" But do you always take him out with you, when you 
go a frieudship-hurtting V 

" Invaiiably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-condi- 
tioned animal. I call him my test — the touchstone by 
which to try a friend. No one can properly be said to 
love me, who does not love him." 



3GG THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

" Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if upon 
further consideration we are obliged to decline the otherwise 
invaluable offer of yoiu' friendship. We do not like dogs." 

"Mighty well, sir, — you know the conditions — you 
may have worse offers. Come along. Test." 

The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in 
the intercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions of 
breaking off an agreeable intimacy by reason of these 
canine appendages. They do not always come in the 
shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the more plausible 
and human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my 
friend's friend, his partner, his wife, or his children. "We 
could never yet form a friendship — not to speak of more 
delicate correspondence — however much to our taste, 
Avithout the intervention of some third anomaly, some 
impertinent clog affixed to the relation — the imderstood 
dog in the proverb. The good things of life are not to 
be had singly, but come to us with a mixture ; like a 
school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. 
What a delightful companion is * * * * if he did not 
always bring his tall cousin with him ! He seems to 
grow with him ; like some of those double births which 
we remember to have read of with such wonder and de- 
light in the old "Athenian Oracle," where Swift com- 
menced author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a begin- 
ning for him !) upon Sir William Temple. There is the 
picture of the brother, with the little brother peeping out 
at his shoulder ; a species of fraternity, which we have 
no name of kin close enough to comprehend. When * * * * 
comes, poking in his head and shoulder into your room, 
as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got 
him to yourself — what a three hom's' chat we shall have ! 
—but ever in the haunch of him, and before his diffident 
body is well disclosed in yoiu- apartment, appears the 
haunting shadow of the cousin, overpeering his modest 
kinsman, and sure to overlay the expected good talk with 
his insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding 
dwarfishness of observation. Misfortunes seldom come 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 3G7 

alone. Tis hard when a blessing comes accompanied. 
Cannot we like Sempronia, without sitting down to chess 
with her eternal brother; or know Sulpicia, without 
knowing all the round of her card-playing relations 1 — 
must my friend's brethren of necessity be mine also ? must 
we be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack 
Sejby the calico-printer, because W. S., who is neither, but 
a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a common 
parentage with them 1 Let him lay down his brothers ; 
and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we 
have a superflux) to balance the concession. Let F. H. 
lay down his garrulous uncle ; and Honorius dismiss his 
vapid wife, and superfluous establishment of six boys : 
things between boy and manhood — too ripe for jDlay, too 
raw for conversation — that come in, impudently staring 
his father's old friend out of countenance ; and will neither 
aid nor let alone, the conference ; that we may once more 
meet upon equal terms, as we were wont to do in the 
disengaged state of bachelorhood. 

It is well if yoiu' friend, or mistress, be content with 
these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this 
sense keep a dog. But while Rutilia hounds at you her 
tiger aunt ; or Euspina expects you to cherish and fondle 
her viper sister, whom she has preposterously taken into 
her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your con- 
stancy ; they must not complain if the house be rather 
thin of suitors. Scylla must have bi'oken off" many ex- 
cellent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that 
loved her loving her dogs also. 

An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of 
Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and 
courted a modest appanage to the Opera — in truth, a 
daiicer — who had won him by the artless contrast between 
her manners and situation. She seemed to him a native 
violet, that had been transplanted by some rude accident 
into that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in truth, was 
she less genuine and sincere than she appeared to him: 
He wooed and won this flower. Only for appearance sake. 



368 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

and for due honour to the bride's relations, she craved 
that she might have the attendance of her friends and 
kindred at the approaching solemnity. The request was 
too amiable not to be conceded ; and in this solicitude for 
conciliating the good -will of mere relations, he found a 
presage of her superior attentions to himself, when the 
golden shaft should have "killed the flock of all affections 
else." The morning came : and at the Star and Garter, 
Richmond — the place appointed for the breakfasting — 
accompanied with one English friend, he impatiently 
awaited what reinforcements the bride should bring to 
grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had made. They 
came in six coaches — the whole corps du Ballet — French, 
Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous 
piroiietter of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from 
the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her 
excuse. But the first and second Buffa were there ; and 
Signor Sc — , and Signora Ch — ■, and Madame V — , with 
a countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes ! at 
the sight of whom Merry afterwards declared, that " then 
for the first time it struck him seriously, that he was 
about to marry — a dancer." But there was no help for 
it. Besides, it was her day; these were, in fact, her 
friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, 
was all very natural. But when the bride — handing out 
of the last coach a stiU more extraordinary figure than 
the rest — presented to him as her father — the gentleman 
that was to give her cmay — no less a person than Signor 
Delpini himself — with a sort of pride, as much as to say, 
See what I have brought to do us honour ! — the thought 
of so extraordinary a paternity quite overcame him ; and 
slipping away under some pretence from the bride and her 
motley adherents, poor Merry took horse from the back 
yard to the nearest sea-coast, from which, shipping him- 
self to America, he shortly after consoled himself with a 
more congenial match in the person of Miss Brunton ; 
relieved from his intended clown father, and a bevy of 
painted buffas for bridemaids. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 369 



y^ XIV. THAT WE SHOULD EISE AVITH THE LARK. 

At what precise minute that little airy musician cloffs his 
night -gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable 
matins, we are not naturalist enough to determine. But 
for a mere human gentleman — that has no orchestra 
business to call him from his warm bed to such pre- 
posterous exercises — we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, 
of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very 
earliest hour at which he can begin to think of abandon- 
ing his piUow. To think of it, we say ; for to do it in 
earnest requires another half hour's good consideration. 
Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and 
such like gawds, abroad in the world, in summer-time 
especially, some hom's before what we have assigned ; 
which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting 
up. But having been tempted once or twice, in earlier 
life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity 
abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's 
coiu'tiers, to attend at his morning levees. We hold the 
good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon 
such observances ; which have in them, besides, something 
Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated 
our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), to 
go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, 
but we suffered for it all the long hours after in listless- 
ness and headaches ; Nature herself sufficiently declaring 
her sense of our presumption in aspiring to regulate our 
frail waking courses by the measures of that celestial and 
sleepless traveller. We deny not that there is something 
sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these 
break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the start 
of a lazy world ; to conquer Death by proxy in his image. 
But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we 
pay usually, in strange qualms before night falls, the 
penalty of the unnatural inversion. Therefore, while the 
busy part of mankind are fast huddling on their clothes, 
2 » 



370 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

are already iij) and about their occupatious, content to 
have swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; we choose to 
linger a-bed and digest our dreams. It is the very time 
to recombine the wandering images, which night in a 
confused mass presented ; to snatch them from forgetful- 
ness ; to shape, and mould them. Some joeople have no 
good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp them 
too grossly, to taste them ciuiously. We love to chew 
the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect the scattered rays 
of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer 
nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to drag into day- 
light a struggling and half- vanishing nightmare; to handle 
and examine the terrors, or the airy solaces. We have too 
much respect for these spiritual communications, to let 
them go so lightly. We are not so stupid, or so careless 
as that Imperial forge tter of his dreams, that we should 
need a seer to remind us of the form of them. They 
seem to us to have as much significance as our waking 
concerns ; or rather to import us more nearly, as more 
nearly we approach by years to the shadowy world, whither 
we are hastening. We have shaken hands with the world's 
business ; we have done with it ; we have discharged our- 
self of it. Why should we get up ? we have neither suil^ 
to solicit, nor affairs to manage. The drama has shut hx 
upon us at the fourth act. . We have nothing here to 
expect, but in a short time a sick-bed, and a dismissal. 
We delight to anticipate death by such shadows as night 
affords. We are already half acquainted with ghosts. 
We were never much in the world. Disappointment early 
struck a dark veil between us and its dazzling illusions. 
JDur spirits showed gray before our hairsij The mighty 
changes of the world already apjoear as but the vain stuff" 
out of which dramas are composed. We have asked no 
more of life than what the mimic images in play-houses 
present us with. Even those types have waxed fainter. 
Our clock appears to have struck. We are superan- 
isruATED. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we 
contract jjolitic alliances with shadows. It is good to 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 371 

have friends at court. The extracted media of dreams 
seem no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon 
which, in no long time, we expect to be thrown. We are 
trying to know a little of the usages of that colony ; to 
learn the language and the faces we shall meet with there, 
that we may be the less awkward at our first coming 
among them. We willingly call a phantom our fellow, 
as knowing we shall soon be of their dark companionship. 
Therefore we cherish dreams. We try to spell in them 
the alphabet of the invisible world ; and think we know 
already how it shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes 
which, while we clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, 
have become familiar. We feel attenuated into their 
meagre essences, and have given the hand of half-way 
approach to incorporeal being. We once thought life to 
be something ; but it has unaccountably fallen from us 
before its time. Therefore we choose to dally with visions. 
The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why 
should we get up 1 

XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIB DOWN WITH THE LAMB. 

We could never quite understand the philosophy of this 
arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending 
us for instruction to these woolly bedfellows. A sheep, 
when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly 
eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found out long sixes — ■ 
Hail, candle-light ! without disparagement to sun or moon, 
the kindliest luminary of the three — if we may not rather 
style thee their radiant dejiuty, mild viceroy of the moon ! 
— -We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleeji, by 
candle-light. They are everybody's sun and moon. This 
is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what 
savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, 
wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses ! They 
must have lain about and grumbled at one another in the 
dark. What repartees could have passed, when you must 
have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's 



372 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

cheek to be sure that he understood it 1 This accounts 
for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre 
cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition of\ 
those unlantern'd nights. Jokes came in with candles. 
We wonder how they saw to pick up a pin, if they had 
any. How did they sup 1 what a mflange of chance 
carving they must have made of if?- — here one had got a 
leg of a goat when he wanted a horse's shoulder — there 
another had dij^ped his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild 
honey, when he meditated right mare's milk. There is 
neither good eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even 
in these civilized times, has never experienced this, when 
at some economic table he has commenced dining after 
dusk, and waited for the flavour till the lights came 1 ^he 
senses absolutely give and take reciprocally.'^ Can you 
tell pork from veal in the dark ? or distinguish Sherris 
from pure Malaga 1 Take away the candle from the 
smoking man ; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he 
knows that he is still smoking, but he knows it only by 
an inference ; till the restored light, coming in aid of the 
olfactories, reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then 
how he redoubles his puffs ! how he burnishes ! — there is 
absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We 
have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, 
and in sidtry arbours ; but it was labour thrown away. 
Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering 
and teasing, like so many coquettes, that will have you 
all to their self and are jealous of your abstractions. By 
the midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations,. 
By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if 
we would catch the flame, the odour. It is a mockery, 
all that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true 
poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are 
abstracted works — 

Things that were born, when none but the still night, 
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. 

Marry, daylight — daylight might fiu-nish the images, the 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 373 

crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true turn- 
ing and filing (as mine author hath it), they must he con- 
tent to hold their inspiration of the candle. The mild 
internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the domestic 
hearth, goes out in the sunshine. (^ Night and silence call 
out the starry fancied Milton's Morning Hymn in Para- 
dise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at mid- 
night ; and Taylor's rich description of a sunrise smells 
decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these oiu- hmnbler 
lucubrations tune our best-measured cadences (Prose has 
her cadences) not imfrequeutly to the charm of the 
drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild 
sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier specu- 
lation than we have yet attempted, courts oiu- endeavours. 
We Avould indite something about the Solar System. — 
Betty, bring the candles. 

XVI. — THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE. 

We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a man's 
friends, and to all that have to do with him ; but whether 
the condition of the man himself is so much to be de- 
plored, may admit of a question. We can speak a little 
to it, being ourself but lately recovered — we whisper it 
in confidence, reader — out of a long and desperate fit of 
the sullens. Was the cure a blessing 1 The conviction 
which wrought it, came too clearly to leave a scruple of 
the fanciful injuries — for they Avere mere fancies — which 
had provoked the humour. But the humour itself was 
too self-pleasing while it lasted — we know how bare we 
lay ourself in the confession — to be abandoned all at once 
with the grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs which 
we know to have been imaginary ; and for our old ac- 
quaintance N , whom we find to have been a truer 

friend than we took him for, we substitute some phantom 
— a Caius or a Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, 
to wreak our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is morti- 
fying to fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to forego 



374 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

the idea of having beeu ill-used and contumaciously treated 
by an old friend. The first thing to aggrandize a man in 
his own conceit, is to conceive of himself as neglected. 
There let him fix if he can. To undeceive him is to de- 
prive him of the most tickling morsel within the range of 
self-complacency. No flattery can come near it. Happy 
is he who suspects his friend of an injustice ; but supremely 
blest, who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy to depress 
and undervalue him. There is a pleasm'e (we sing not to 
the profane) far beyond the reach of all that the world 
counts joy— a deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, 
where the superficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we 
to recite one half of this mystery — -which we were let into 
by our late dissatisfaction, all the world would be in love 
with disrespect ; we should wear a slight for a bracelet, 
and neglects and contumacies woidd be the only matter 
for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious book in the 
Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is unpalatable only 
in the commencement. The first sting of a suspicion is 
grievous ; but wait — out of that wound, which to flesh 
and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm and honey to 
be extracted. Your friend passed you on such or such a 
day, — having in his company one that you conceived worse 
than ambiguously disposed towards you, — passed you in 
the street without notice. To be sure, he is something 
short-sighted ; and it was in your power to have accosted 
him. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true 
adept in the science of dissatisfaction. He must have 

seen you ; and S , who was with him, must have beeu 

the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may. 
But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of it, 
and you are a made man from this time. Shut yourself 
up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to your peace, every 
whispering suggestion that but insinuates there may be a 
mistake — reflect seriously upon the many lesser instances 
which you had begun to perceive, in proof of your friend's 
disaffection towards you. None of them singly was much 
to the purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive ; and 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 375 

you have this last affront to clench them. Thus far the 
process is anything but agreeable. But now to your relief 
comes the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the 
kind feelings you have had for your friend ; what you have 
been to him, and what you would have been to him, if he 
would have suftered you ; how you defended him in this 
or ihat place ; and his good name — his literary reputation, 
and so forth, was always dearer to you than your own ! 
Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards him. You 
could weep tears of blood but for a restraining pride. 
How say you ? do you not yet begin to apprehend a com- 
fort 1 — some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters ? Stop 
not here, nor penuriously cheat yourself of your reversions. 
You are on vantage ground. Enlarge your specidations, 
and take in the rest of your friends, as a spark kindles 
more sparks. Was there one among them who has not 
to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water t Begin to 
think that the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. 
That the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, 
as honour, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single 
bosom. Image yourself to yourself as the only possible 
friend in a world incapable of that communion. Now the 
gloom thickens. The little star of self-love twinkles, that 
is to encourage you through deeper glooms than this. You 
are not yet at the half point of your elevation. You 
are not yet, believe me, half sulky enough. Adverting to 
the world in general (as these circles in the mind will 
spread to infinity), reflect with what strange injustice you 
have been treated in quarters where (setting gratitude and 
the expectation of friendly retiu-ns aside as chimeras) you 
pretended no claim beyond justice, the naked due of all 
men. Think the very idea of right and fit fled from the 
earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle of it till you 
have swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere ; the 
other being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the 
world aforesaid. To grow bigger every moment in yoxu- 
own conceit, and the world to lessen ; to deify yourself at 
the expense of your species ; to judge the world — this is 



376 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the acme and supreme point of your mystery — these the 
true Pleasures op Sulkiness. We profess no more of 
this grand secret than what oiu'self experimented on one 
rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in our study. 
We had proceeded to the penultimate point, at which the 
true adept seldom stops, where the consideration of benefit 
forgot is about to merge in the meditation of general 
injustice — when a knock at the door was followed by the 
entrance of the very friend whose not seeing of us in the 
morning (for we will now confess the case our own), an 
accidental oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable 
generalization ! To mortify us still more, and take down 
the whole flattering superstructm-e which pride had piled 
iipon neglect, he had brought in his hand the identical 
S -, in whose favour we had suspected him of the con- 
tumacy. Asseverations were needless, where the frank 
manner of them both was convictive of the injurious nature 
of the suspicion. We fancied that they perceived our 
embarrassment ; but were too proud, or something else, 
to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too lately 
in the condition of the noble patient in Argos : — 

Qui se credebat miros audire tragcedos, 
111 vacuo leetus sessor plausorque theatro — 

and could have exclaimed with equal reason against the 
friendly hands that cm-ed us — 

Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
Noil servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. 



NOTES. 



KECOLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.— P. 1. 

{London Magazine, August 1820.) 

Chakles Lamb left Christ's Hospital in the year 1789. at the 
age of foiu'teen, and at some date within the next two years he 
obtained a situation in the South -Sea House. His father's 
employer, Samuel Salt, the Bencher of the Inner Temple, was 
a Deputy-Governor of the South-Sea House at the time, and it 
was doubtless by the influence of this kind friend that the 
appointment was obtained. Charles's elder brother, John, was 
already a clerk in the office. In the Royal Calendar for 1792 
John Lamb's name appears as holding the position of Deputy- 
Accountant. Other of the names mentioned by Lamb in this 
Essay are also found in the official records of the day — John 
Tipp, on whose promotion to the office of Accountant (as "John 
Tipp, Esq."), John Lamb succeeded to the post just mentioned ; 
W. Evans, Deputy-Cashier in 1791 ; Thomas Tame, Deputy- 
Cashier in 1793 ; and Richard Plumer, Deputy - Secretary in 
1800, Lamb's fondness for gratuitous mystification is thus 
curiously illustrated in the insinuation toAvards the close of the 
Essay that the names he has recorded are fictitious, after all. 
Lamb's old colleague, Elia, whose name he borrowed, has not 
(as far as I am aware) been yet traced in the annals of the office. 
But he probably held, like Lamb himself, a very subordinate 
position. 

A full account of the famous Soiith-Sea Bubble mil be found 
in Lord Stanhope's History, and also in Chambers's Booh of Days. 
For an account of the constitution of the Company at the end 
of the last century, Hughson's Walks through London (1805) 
may be consulted. He says — " ISTotwithstanding the terms of 
the charter by which we are to look upon this Company as 
merchants, it is observable that they never carried on any con- 
siderable trade, and now they have no trade. They only receive 
interest for their capital which is in the hands of the Govern- 



378 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ment, and £8000 out of the Treasury towards the expense 
attending the management of their affairs, which is done by a 
Governor, Sub - Governor, Deputy - Governor, and twenty -one 
Directors annually chosen on the 6th of February by a majority 
of votes." Pennant (who is referred to in this Essay, and wrote 
in 1790) says — "In this (Threadneedle) Street also stands the 
South-Sea House, the place in which the Company did business, 
when it had any to transact. " 

Henry Man, the Wit, etc. — The two "forgotten volumes" — 
" MisceHa7ieous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man. 
London, 1802" — are now before me. They contain a variety 
of light and amusing papers in verse and prose. The humour 
of them, however, is naturally still more out of date now than 
in Lamb's day. One of the epigrams found there may be said 
to have become classical, — that upon the two Earls (Spencer 
and Sandwich) who invented respectively "half a coat" and 
"half a dinner." Henry Man was Deputy- Secretary in 1793. 

Battle-headed Plumer. — Lamb had a special interest in the 
family bearing this name, because his grandmother, Mary Field, 
was for more than half a century housekeeper at the Dower 
House of the family, Blakesware in Hertfordshire. The pre- 
sent Mr. Plumer, of Allerton, Totness, a grandson of Eichard 
Plumer of the South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in the 
tradition here recorded as to his gi'andfather's origin. He 
believes that though the links are missing, Richard Plumer 
was descended in regular line from the Baronet, Sir "Walter 
Plumer, who died at the end of the seventeenth century. Lamb's 
memory has failed him here in one respect. The "Bachelor 
Uncle," Walter Plumer, uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, 
was most certainly not a bachelor (see the Pedigree of the family 
in Cussans' Hertfordshire). Lamb is further inaccurate as to 
the connection of this Walter Plumer with the affair of the 
franks. A reference to Johnson's Life of Cave Avill show that 
it was Cave, and not Plumer, who was summoned before the 
House of Commons. Walter Plumer, member for Aldborough 
and Appleby, had given a frank to the Duchess of Marlborough, 
which liad been challenged by Cave, who held the post of Clerk 
of the Franks in the House of Commons. For this. Cave was 
cited before the House, as a Breach of Privilege. 

In the passage on John Tipp, Lamb, speaking of his fine 
suite of rooms in Threadneedle Street, adds — "I know not who 
is the occupier of them now." When the Essay first appeared 
in the London Magazine, the note in brackets was appended. 
Thus we learn that John Lamb was still, in 1820, occupying 
rooms in the old building. 



NOTES. 379 

Mild, chilcl-likc, ixtsLoral M . — "Maynard, haiig'd liim- 

self " (Lamb's " Key "). Mr. T. Maynard was chief clerk of the 
Old Annuities and Three jier Cents from 1788 to 1793. His 
name does not appear in the almanacs of the day after this date. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION.— P. 10. 

(London Magazine, October 1S20.) 

Lamb was fond of spending his annual holiday in one or 
other of the great university to"\\ias, more often pei'haps in 
Cambridge. It was on one such visit, it will be remembered, 
that Charles and Mary first made the acquaintance of little 
Emma Isola. On its first appearance in the London, the paper 
was dated "August 5, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bod- 
leian." A sonnet writen a year before at Cambridge, tells of 
the charm that University associations had for one who had 
been debarred through infirmity of health and poverty from a 
university education : — 

" I was not trained in Academic bowers, 
And to those learned streams I nothing owe 
Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow ; 
Mine have been anything but studious hours. 
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, 
Myself a nursling, Grauta, of thy lap ; 
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, 
And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. 
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, 
Old Kamus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 
And my skull teems with notions iniinite. 
Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 
Tnrths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein, 
And half had staggered that stout Stagirite !" 

" Andrew and John, men famous in old times," quoted, quite 
at random, from Paradise Regained, ii. 7. 

G. D. — George Dyer (1755-1841), educated at Christ's Hos- 
pital and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A compiler and 
editor and general worker for the booksellers, short-sighted, 
absent-minded, and simple, for whom Lamb had a life -long 
affection. He compiled, among other books, a History of the 
University and Colleges of Cambridge, and contributed the 
original matter (preface excepted) to Yalpy's edition of the 
Classics. Tlie account of him given by Crabb Robinson in his 
Diary well illustrates Lamb's frequent references to this singular 
character. " He was one of the best creatures, morally, that 
ever breathed. He was the son of a watchman in Wapping, 



380 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

and was put to a charity school by some pious Dissenting ladies. 
He afterwards went to Christ's Hospital, and from there was 
sent to Cambridge. He was a scholar, but to the end of his 
days (and he lived to be eighty-five) was a bookseller's drudge. 
He led a life of literary labour in poverty. He made indexes, 
corrected the press, and occasionally gave lessons in Latin and 
Greek. Wlien an undergraduate at Cambridge he became a 
hearer of Robert Robinson, and consequently a Unitarian. This 
closed the church against him, and he never had a fellowship, 
. .. . He wi'ote one good book — The Life of Robert Robinson, 
which I have heard Wordsworth mention as one of the best 
works of biography in the language. . . . Dyer had the kindest 
heart and simplest manners imaginable. It was literally the 
case with him that he would give away his last guinea. . . . 
Not many yeai's before his death he married his laundress, by 
the advice of his friends — a very worthy woman. He said to 
me once, 'Mrs. Dyer is a woman of excellent natural sense, 
but she is not literate. ' That is, she could neither read nor 
wi'ite. Dyer was blind for a few years before his death. I used 
occasionally to go on a Sunday morning to read to him. . . . 
After he came to London, Dyer lived always in some very 
humble chambers in Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street." 

Give me Agur's Wish. — See the Book of Proverbs xxx. 10. 

Our friend M. 's in Bedford Square. — M. was Basil Montagu, 
Q.C., and editor of Bacon. Mrs. M. was of course Irving's 
"noble lady," so familiar to us from Qaxlyle,' a Reminiscences. 
"Pretty A. S." was Mrs. Montagu's daughter, Anne Skepper, 
afterwards the wife of Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall). In his 
Memoir of Lamb, Mr. Procter significantly remarks that he 
could vouch personally for the truth of this anecdote of Dyer's 
absent-mindedness. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder rej)ose of MSS. — 
In the London Magazine was appended the following note : — 

"There is something to me repugnant at any time in written 
hand. The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. 
I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty — as 
springing up with all its parts absolute — till, in an evil hour, 
I was shown the original copy of it, together with the other 
minor poems of its • author, in the library of Trinity, kept like 
some treasure, to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them 
in the Cam, or sent them after the latter Cantos of Spenser, 
into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine 
things in their ore ! interlined, corrected ! as if their words 
were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure ! as if they 
might have been otherwise, and just as good ! as if inspiration 
were made i^p of parts, and these flxictuating, successive, in- 



NOTES. 381 

different ! I will never go into the workshop of any great artist 
again, nor desire a sight of his picture till it is fairly off the 
easel : no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting 
another Galatea." 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
— r. 17. 

^ {Londoth Magazine, Xovember lS-20.) 

The first collected edition of Lamb's Prose and Verse appeared 
in the year 1818, published by C. and J. Oilier. Among other 
papers it contained one entitled Recollections of Christ's Bosjntal. 
The Essay was a reprint from the Gentleman's 3Iagazine for Juno 
1813, where it originally owed its appearance to an alleged abuse 
of the presentation system in force at the Blue Coat School. 

This earlier article on Christ's Hospital had been written in 
a serious and genuine vein of enthusiasm for the value and 
dignity of the old Foundation. Lamb now seems to have 
remembered that there Avere other aspects of schoolboy life 
under its shelter that might be profitably dealt with. The 
"poor friendless boy," in whose character he noAV writes, was 
his old schoolfellow Coleridge, and the general truth of the 
sketch is shown by Coleridge's own reference to his schooldays 
in the early chapters of his Biogra2)Ma Literaria. ' ' In my 
friendless wanderings on our leave-days (for I was an orphan, 
and had scarce any connections in London) highly was 1 
delighted if any passenger, especially if he were dressed in 
black, would enter into conversation with me. " 

Lamb's love of mystification shows itself in this Essay in 
many forms. " Sweet Calne in Wiltshire " is a quite gratuitous 
substitiition for Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, the home after 
which young Coleridge did actually yearn. Coleridge did, how- 
ever, reside for a time at Calne in later life. Moreover, as will 
be seen, the disguise of identity with Coleridge is dropped 
altogether towards the close of the Essay. The general account 
of the school here given it is interesting to compare with that 
given by Leigh Hunt in his autobiography. 

L.'s governor {so we called the 2)atron toho 'prcscntcel us to the 
foundation) lived in a manner under Ms paternal roof. — It was 
under Samuel Salt's roof that John Lamb and his family 
lived, and as the presentation to Christ's was obtained from a 
friend of Salt's, Lamb considers it fair to speak of the old 
Bencher as the actual benefactor. 

There loas one H . — Hodges (Lamb's " Key "). 

" To feed our mind with idle portraiture," a line apparently 



382 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

extemporised by Lamb as a translation of the passage in Virgil 
to wliicli he refers, " a7iiinum 2ncturd pascit inani." 

" 'Tiuas said 
He ate strange flesh." 

As usual, a new quotation formed out of Lamb's general 
recollection of an old one. He had in his mind, no doubt, a 
passage in Antony and Cleopatra (Act I. Sc. 4) : — 

" It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh 
Which some did die to look on. " 

Mr. Hatliaway, the then Steward. — Perry was steward in 
Lamb's day (see the former Essay on Christ's Hospital). Leigh 
Hunt says of his successor : — " The name of the steward, a thin 
stiff man of invincible formality of demeanour, admirably fitted 
to render encroachment impossible, was Hathaway. "We of the 
grammar school used to call him ' the Yeoman ' on account of 
Shakspeare having married the daughter of a man of that name, 
designated as 'a substantial yeoman.'" 

The Hev. James Boyer became upper master of Christ's in 
1777. For the better side of Boyer's qualifications as a teacher, 
see Coleridge's BiograpMa Literaria, the passage beginning, 
"At school I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very 
sensible, though at the same time a very severe master. " Else- 
where Coleridge entirely confirms Lamb's and Leigh Hunt's 
accounts of Boyer's violent temper, and severe discipline. Lamb 
never reached the position of Grecian, but it is the tradition in 
Christ's Hospital that he was under Boyer's instruction some 
time before leaving school. 

The Bcv. Mattliew Field. — Some charming additional traits 
in this character, entirely confirming Lamb's account, will be 
found in Leigh Hunt's autobiography. "A man of a more 
handsome incompetence for his situation perhaps did not exist. 
He came late of a morning ; went away soon in the afternoon ; 
and used to walk up and down, languidly bearing his cane, as 
if it were a lily, and hearing our eternal Dominuses and As in 
jn-aesentis with an air of ineffable endurance. Often he did not 
hear at all. It was a joke with us when any of our friends came 
to the door, and we asked his permission to go to them, to 
address him mth some preposterous question wide of the mark ; 
to which he used to assent. We would say, for instance, ' Are 
you not a great fool, sir ? ' or ' Isn't your daughter a pretty 
girl?' to which he would reply, 'Yes, child.' When he con- 
descended to hit us with the cane, he made a face as if he were 
taking physic. " 

The Author of the Country Spectator. — For an amusing ac- 



NOTES. 383 

count of the origin of tliis periodical, see Mozley's Reminiscences 
of Oriel College, vol. ii. addenda. 

Dr. T e. — Dr. TroUope, who succeeded Boyer as head- 
master. 

T'/i——.— Thornton (Lamb's "Key"). 

Poor S . — " Scott, died in Bedlam " (Lamb's " Key "). 

Ul -fated M . — " Maunde, dismiss'd school" (Lamb's 

"Key"). 

' ' Finding some of Edward's Race 
Unhappy, -pass their annals by." 

Adapted from Matt. Prior's Carmen Saicularc for 1700 (stanza 
viii. ) — 

" Janus, mighty deity, 

Be kind, and as thy searching eye 

Does our modern story trace. 

Finding some of Stuart's race 

Unhappy, pass their annals by." 

G. V. Le G. — Charles Valentine Le Grice and a younger 
brother of the name of Samuel Avere Grecians and prominent 
members of the school in Lamb's day. They were from Corn- 
wall. Charles became a clergyman and held a living in his 
native county. Samuel went into the army, and died in the 
West Indies. It was he who was staying in London in the 
autumn of 1796, and showed himself a true friend to the Lambs 
at the season of the mother's death. Lamb ■\\Tites to Coleridge, 
" Sam Le Grice, who was then in town, was with me the three 
or four first days, and was as a brother to me ; gave up every 
hour of his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits 
in constant attendance, and humouring my poor father ; talked 
with him, read to him, played at cribbage with him." He was 
a "mad wag," according to Leigh Hunt, who tells some plea- 
sant anecdotes of him, but must have been a good-hearted fellow. 
"Le Grice the elder was a wag," adds Hunt, "like his brother, 
but more staid. He went into the church as he ought to do, 
and married a rich widow. He published a translation, abridged, 
of the celebrated pastoral of Longus ; and report at school made 
him the author of a little anonymous tract on the Art of Poking 
the Fire. " 

" Which two I behold," etc. — This is Fuller's account of the 
wit- combats between Ben Jonson and Shakspeare. 

The Jtonior Le G. and F. — The latter of these was named 
Favell, also a Grecian in the school. These two, according to 



384 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

Leigli Hunt, when at the university wrote to the Duke of York 
to ask for commissions in the army. " The Duke good-naturedly 
sent them. " Favell was killed in the Peninsula. His epitaph 
will bo found on a tablet in Great St. Andrew's Church, Cam- 
bridge : — "Samuel, a Captain in the 61st Regiment, having 
been engaged in the expedition to Egypt, afterwards served in 
the principal actions in the Peninsula, and fell whilst heading 
his men to the charge in the Battle of Salamanca, July 21, 1812." 
"We shall meet with him again, under a different initial, in the 
essay on Poor Eelations. 

THE TWO RACES OE MEN.— P. 31. 
{London Magazine, December 1S20.) 

Ilali^Ii Blgocl. — John Fenwick, editor of the Albion. See 
later essay on NcivspaiJcrs Thirty-five Years Ago. 
' ' To slacken virtue and ahate lier edge 

Than prompt her to do aught may merit i^'aise. " 
Paradise Eegained, ii. 455. 

Comberbatch, more properly Comberback, the name adopted 
by Coleridge when he enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons, in 
Dec. 1793. He gave his name to the authorities as Silas Titus 
Comberback, with initials corresponding to his own, perhaps in 
order that the marks on his clothes might not raise suspicion. 
"Being at a loss when suddenly asked my name," he writes, 
' ' I answered Comberback ; and, verily, my habits were so little 
equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of that opinion." 

TFayward, Sjntefid K. — Kenney, the dramatist, who married 
a Frenchwoman and lived for some years at Versailles. Lamb 
visited him there in 1822. 

" Unworthy land, to harbour such a sweetness." 

I have not been able as yet to trace this quotation to its source. 

S. T. C. — Of course, Coleridge again. It is a good illus- 
tration of Lamb's fondness for puzzling that having to instance 
his friend, he indicates him three times in the same essay by a 
different alias. Coleridge's constant practice of enriching his 
own and other's books with these marginalia is well known. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE.— P. 37. 

(London Magazine, January 1821.) 

It was probably this paper, together with that on 'Witches 
and other Night Fears, which so shocked the moral sense of 
Southey, and led to his lamenting publicly, in the pages of the 
Quarterly, the ' ' absence of a sounder religious feeling " in the 
Essays of Eliu. The melancholy scepticism of its strain would 



NOTES. 385 

appear to have struck others at the time. A gi-aceful and 
tenderly-remonstrative copy of verses, suggested by it, appeared 
in the London Magazine for August 1821, signed " Olen." 
Lamb noticed them in a letter to his publisher Mr. Taylor, of 
July 30. ' ' You will do me injustice if you do not convey to the 
writer of the beautiful lines, which I here return you, my sense 
of the extreme kindness which dictates them. Poor Elia (call 
him EUia) does not pretend to so very clear i*evelations of a 
future state of being as ' Olen ' seems gifted with. Ho 
stumbles about dark mountains at best ; but he knows at least 
how to be thankful for this life, and is too thankful, indeed, 
for certain relationships lent him here, not to tremble for a 
possible resumption of the gift." 

Lamb thinks that the verses may have been by James Mont- 
gomery, who was on the staff of the London, but I have not 
found them reprinted in any collected edition of Montgomery's 
poems. 

' ' / sail) the shirts of the departing Year. " 

From the iirst strophe of Coleridge's " Ode to the departing 
'Year," as originally printed in the Bristol edition of his poems 
in 1796. He afterwards altered the line to 

'' I saw the train of the departing Year." 

" Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." 

From Pope's translation of the Odyssey. (Book xv. line 84.) 

Alice W n. — According to Lamb's "Key," for Winterton. 

In any case the fictitious name by which Lamb chose to indicate 
the object of his boyish attachment, whose form and features he 
loved to dwell on in his early sonnets, Rosamund Gray, and 
afterwards in his essays. We shall meet her again later on. 

'•' Sioeet assurance of a looh." — From Lamb's favourite Elegy 
on Philip Sidney, by Matthew Eoydon. 

From what have L not fallen, if the child I remember iva^s 
indeed myself. — The best commentary on this passage is that 
supplied by Lamb's beautiful sonnet, written as far back as 
1795:— 

' ' We were two pretty babes ; the youngest she, 
The youngest, and the loveliest far (I ween) 
And Innocence her name : the time has been 
We two did love each other's company ; 
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. 
But when, by show of seeming good beguiled, 
I left the garb and manners of a child, 
And my first love for man's society, 

2 c 



386 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Deliling with the world my virgm heart — 
My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled, 
And hid in deepest shades her awful head. 
Beloved ! who shall tell me, where thon art ? 
In what delicious Eden to be found ? 
That I may seek thee, the wide world around." 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.— P. 44. 
(London Magazine, February 1821.) 

There is probably no evidence existing as to the original of 
Mrs. Battle. Several of Lamb's commentators have endeavoured 
to prove her identity with Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother, so 
long resident with the Plumer family ; the sole fact common to 
them being that Lamb represents Mrs. Battle (in the essay on 
Blakesmoor) as having died at Blalcesware, where also Mrs. Field 
ended her days. But any one who will read, after the present 
essay. Lamb's indisputably genuine and serious verses on Mrs. 
Field's death ( The Grandame) mil feel that to have transformed 
her into this "gentlewoman born" with the fine " last century 
countenance," would have been little short of a niauvaise plai- 
sajiterie, of which Lamb was not likely to have been guilty. 

Mr. Boioles. — William Lisle Bowles brought out his edition 
of Pope in 1807. 

Bridget Elia. — The name by which Lamb always indicates his 
sister in this series of essays. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS.— P. 52. 
{London Magazine, March 1821.) 

Lamb's indifference to music is one of the best-known features 
of his personality. Compare the admirably humorous verses, 
"Free Thoughts on several Eminent Composers," beginning — 

" Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 
Just as the whim bites ; for my part 
I do not care a farthing candle 
For either of them, or for Handel, — 
Cannot a man live free and easy 
Without admiring Pergolesi ? 
Or through the world with comfort go 
That never heard of Dr. Blow?" 

My friend A.'s. — Doiibtless Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, 
the well-known musical critic of that day (1777-1858). 



NOTES. 387 

Parly in a parlour, etc. — From a stanza in the original draft 
of Wordsworth's Peter Bell. The stanza was omitted in all 
editions of the poem after the first (1819). 

My good Catholic friend Nov . — Vincent Novello, the 

well-known organist and composer, father of Mde. Clara Novello 
and Mrs. Cowden Clarke (1781-1861). 

rapt above earth, 

And possess joys not promised at my birth. 
■ — "As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possessed 
my soul -with content that I thought, as the poet has happily 
expressed it, — 

I was for that time lifted above earth ; 
And possessed joys not promised at my birth." 
— Walton's Complete Angler, Part I. chap. 4. 



ALL FOOL'S DAY.— R 58. 

{London Magazine, April 1821.) 

The crazy old church clock, 
And the bewildered chimes. 
— Wordsworth, " The Fountain : a Conversation." 

Ha, I honest It. — -According to Lamb's " Key," one Ramsay, 
who kept the "London Library" in Ludgate Street. 

Granville S. — Granville Sharp, the abolitionist, died in 1813. 

King Pandion, he is dead ; 
All thy friends are lapt in lead. 
— From the verses on a Nightingale, beginning— 
"As it fell upon a day,". 

formerly ascribed to Shakspeare, but now known to be written 
by Richard Barnfield. 

A QUAKERS' MEETING.— P. 62. 

(LoTidon Magazine, April 1821.) 

"Boreas and Cesias and Argestes loud." 
— Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 699. 

sands, ignoble things, 

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. 

— From "Lines on the Tombs in Westminster Abbey," by 

Francis Beaumont. 



388 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Kow reverend is the view of these htisJiecl heads, 
Looking tranquillity ! 

— A good example of Lamb's liabit of constructing a quotation 
out of his general recollection of a passage. The lines he had 
in his mind are from Congreve's Mourning Bride, Act II. Scene 
1:— 

" How reverend is the face of this tall pile, 
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads 
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof, 
By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable, 
Looking tranqitillity. " 

The ivritings of John Woolman. — "A journal of the life, gospel 
labours, and Christian experiences of that faithful minister of 
Jesus Christ, John AVoolman, late of Mount Holly, in the Pro- 
vince of Jersey, North America " (1720-1772). Woolman was an 
American Quaker of humble origin, an "illiterate tailor," one 
of the first who had " misgivings about the institution of 
slavery. " Crabb Robinson, to whom Lamb introduced the book, 
becomes rapturous over it. "His religion is love ; his whole 
existence and all his passions were love !" 

^^ Forty feeding like one." 

— From Wordsworth's verses, written in March 1801, beginning 

" The cock is crowing, 
The stream is flowing." 

I have noted elsewhere Lamb's strong native sympathy with 
the Quaker spirit and Quaker manners and customs, a sympathy 
so marked that it is difficult to believe it was not inherited, and 
that on one or other side of his parentage he had not relations 
with the Society of Friends. His picture of the Quakerism of 
sixty years ago is of almost historical value, so great are the 
changes that have since divided the Society against itself. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.— P. 67. 

{London Magazine, May 1821.) 

My friend M. — Thomas Manning, the mathematician and ex- 
plorer, whose acquaintance Lamb made early in life at Cambridge. 

King Basilius. — See Sidney's Arcadia, Book i. (vol. ii. p. 17 
of the edition of 1725.) 

Even a child, that " plaything for an hour." — One of Lamb's 
quotations from himself. The phrase occurs in a charming poem, 
of three stanzas, in the Poetry for Children : — 



NOTES. 389 

'A child's a plaything for an hour ; 

Its pretty tricks we tr}- 
For that or for a longer space ; 
Then tire and lay it by. 

' But I knew one that to itself 
All seasons could control ; 
That would have mocked the sense of pain 
Out of a grieved soul. 

' Thou straggler into loving arms, 

Young climber up of knees, 
When I forget thy thousand ways, 
Then life and all shall cease." 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.— P. 76. 

(London Magazine, August 1S21.) 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky. — Quoted, not Avith 
perfect accuracy, from Paradise Lost, vii. 23. 

John JBuncle. — "The Life of John Buncle, Esq. ; containing 
various observations and reflections, made in several parts of the 
world, and many extraordinary relations." By Thomas Amor}' 
(1756-66). Amory was a staunch Unitarian, an earnest moralist, 
a humorist, and eccentric to the verge of insanity — four quali- 
fications which would appeal ii-resistibly to Lamb's sympathies. 

A graceful figure, after Leonardo da Vinci. — This print, a 
present to Lamb from Crabb Robinson in 1816, was of Leonardo 
da Vinci's Vierge aux Eochers. It was a special favourite with 
Charles and Mary, and is the subject of some verses by Charles. 

B would have been inore in keeping if he had abided by 

the faith of his forefathers. — Braham, the singei\ In a letter to 
Manning, Lamb describes him as a compound of the ' ' Jew, the 
gentleman, and the angel." 

" To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse." 
— Slightly altered from Paradise Regained, Book ii. line 278. 

/ icas travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers. — 
This adventure happened not to Lamb, but to Sir Anthony 
Carlisle, the surgeon, from whom Lamb had the anecdote. 

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.— P. 85. 
{Lo^idon Magazine, October 1821.) 

Headless bear, Mack man, or ape. — From "The Author's 
vVbstract of ilelancholy, " preiixed to Burton's Anatomy of 
Melancholy. 



390 THE ESSAYS OE ELIA. 

Dear little T. H. — ^Tliornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest boy. 
This passage is interesting as having provoked Southey's violent 
attack on Leigh Hunt and his principles, in the Qitarterlij Re- 
view for January 1823. 

' ' names whose sense we see not 

Fray lis with things that he not." 
— From Spenser's Epithalamium, line 343. 

I have formerly travelled among the Westmoreland Fells. — 
See Lamb's letter to Manning, in 1802, describing his and Mary's 
visit to Coleridge at Keswick. "We got in in the evening, 
travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gor- 
geous sunset, which transmuted all the mountains into colours. 
We thought we had got into Fairyland. . . . Such an impres- 
sion I never received fi'om objects of sight before, nor do I sup- 
pose that I can ever again." 



VALENTmE'S DAY.— P. 93. 
(Leigh Hunt's Indicator, February 14, 1821.) 

^^ Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings." 
— Paradise Lost, i. 768. 

" Crives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated." — 
Another of Lamb's adaptations of Shakspeare. The original is 
in Twelfth Night (Act II. Sc. 4. ) 

A little later on will be noticed a similar free-and-easy use 
of a passage from Wordsworth. 

E. 5.— Edward Francis Bumey (1760-1848), a portrait- 
painter, and book-illustrator on a large scale. He was a cousin 
of Mde. D'Arblay, and not a half-brother as stated in Lamb's 
"Key." His name may be seen "at the bottom of many a 
well-executed vignette in the way of his profession" in the 
periodicals of his day. He illustrated for Harrison, the Wo7'ld, 
Tatler, Guardian, Adventurer, etc. , besides the Arabian Nights, 
and novels of Richardson and Smollett. 



MY RELATIONS.— P. 96. 
(London Magazine, June 1821.) 

In these two successive essays, and in that on the Benchers 
of the Inner Temple, Lamb draws portraits of singular interest 
to us, of his father, aunt, brother, and sister — all his near re- 
lations with one exception. The mother's name never occurs 



NOTES. 391 

in letter or publislied writing after the iirst bitterness of the 
calamity of September 1796 had passed away. This was doubt- 
less out of consideration for the feelings of his sister. Very 
noticeable is the frankness with which he describes the less 
agreeable side of the character of his brother John, who was 
still living, and apparently on quite friendly terms with Charles 
and Mary. 

i had an aunt. — A sister of John Lamb the elder, who 
generally lived with the family, and contributed something to 
the common income. After the death of the mother, a lady of 
comfortable means, a relative of the family, oflfered her a home, 
but the arrangement did not succeed, and the aunt returned to 
die among her own people. Charles WTites, just before her 
death in February 1797— "My poor old aunt, who was the 
kindest creature to me when I was at school, and used to bring 
me good things ; when I, schoolboy-like, used to be ashamed 
to see her come, and open her apron, and bring out her basin 
with some nice thing which she had saved for me, — the good 
old creature is now dying. She says, poor thing, she is glad 
she is come home to die mth me. I was always her favourite." 
See also the lines "\mtten on the day of my aunt's funeral" 
in the little volume of Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and 
Charles Lamb, published in 1798. 

Brother or sister, I never liacl any to know them. — In this 
and the next sentence is a curious blending of fact and fiction. 
Besides John and Mary, four other children had been born to 
John and Elizabeth Lamb in the Temple, between the years 
1762 and 1775, but had apparently not survived their infancy. 
Two daughters had been christened Elizabeth, one in 1762 and 
another after her death, in 1768. John and Mary Lamb are 
now to be described as cousins, under the names of James and 
Bridget Elia. Charles Lamb actually had relations, in that 
degree, living in Hertfordshire, in the neighbourhood of Wheat- 
hampstead. 

James is an inexiMcable cousin. — The mixture of the man of 
the world, dilettante, and sentimentalist — not an infrequent 
combination — is here described with graphic power. All that 
we know of John Lamb, the "broad, burly, jovial," living his 
bachelor-life in chambers at the old Sea-House, is supported and 
confirmed by this passage. Touching his extreme sensibility 
to the physical sufferings of animals, there is a letter of Charles 
to Crabb Robinson of the year 1810, which is worth noting. 
"My brother, whom you have met at my rooms (a plump, 
good-looking man of seven-and-forty), has written a book about 
humanity, which I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the 



392 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

publisher has put it into his head that you can get it reviewed 
for him. I daresay it is not in the scope of yoiu- review ; but 
if you could put it into any likely train, he would rejoice. For, 
alas ! our boasted humanity partakes of vanity. As it is, he 
teases me to death with choosing to suppose that I could get it 
into all the Reviews at a moment's notice. I ! ! ! — who have 
been set up as a mark for them to throw at, and would willingly 
consign them all to Megsera's snaky locks. But here's the 
book, and don't show it to Mrs. Collier, for I remember she 
makes excellent eel soup, and the leading points of tbe book are 
directed against that very process." 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 
— From an early sonnet of Lamb's. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. —P. 103. 
{London Magazine, Jiily 1821.) 

Bridget Mia. — Mary Lamb. The lives of the brother and 
sister are so bound together, that the illustrations of theii 
joint life afforded by this essay, and that on Old China, are of 
singular interest. They show us the brighter and happier 
intervals of that life, without which indeed it could hardly have 
been borne for those eight-and-thirty years. In 1805, during 
one of Mary Lamb's periodical attacks of mania, and consequent 
absences from home, Charles writes — "I am a fool bereft of her 
co-operation. I am used to look up to her in the least and 
biggest perplexities. To say all that I find her would be more 
than, I think, anybody could possibly understand. She is 
older, wiser, and better than I am ; and all my wretched imper- 
fections I cover to myself by thinking on her goodness." Com- 
pare also the sonnet written by Charles, in one of his ' ' lucid 
intervals " when himself in confinement, in 1796, ending with 
the words — 

" ■ the mighty debt of love I owe, 

Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend." 

The oldest thing 1 rcinemher is Maekery End, or MacTcarel 
End. — The place, now further contracted into " Mackrye End," 
is about a mile and a half from Wheathampstead, on the Luton 
Branch of the Great Northern Railway. On leaving the Wheat- 
hampstead Station, the traveller must follow the road which 
runs along the valley towards Luton, nearly parallel with the 
I'ailway for about a mile, to a group of houses near the " Cherry 
Trees." At this point, he will turn short to the right, and then 
take the first turning on his left, along the edge of a pretty 



NOTES. 393 

little wood. He will soon see tlie venerable old Jacobean mansion, 
properly called Mackrye End, and close to it a whitish farm- 
house, which is the one occupied by Lamb's relatives, the Glad- 
mans, at the time of the pilgrimage recorded in this essay. 
The present ^vriter has visited the spot, also in the ' ' heart of 
June," and bears the pleasantest testimony to its rural beauty 
and seclusion. The farmhouse has had an important addition 
to it since Lamb's day, but a large portion of the building is 
evidently still the same as when the " image of welcome" came 
forth from it to greet the brother and sister. May I, without 
presumption, call attention to the almost imique beauty of this 

" ' ■' ' But thou that didst appear so fair 
To fond imagination. 

— Wordsworth's "Yarrow Visited." 

B. F. — Barron Field, who accompanied Lamb and his sister 
on this expedition. See the essay on Distant Correspondents. 

Compare a letter of Lamb to Manning in May 1819. "How 
are my cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and farmer 
Bruton ? Mrs. Bruton is a glorious woman. ' Hail, Mackery 
End. ' This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once 
meditated, but got no further." 

MY FIEST PLAY.— P. 108. 
{London Magazine, December 1S21.) 
The only landed property I could ever call my own. — Mrs. 
Procter informs me that a relative of Lamb's did actually be- 
queath to him a small ' ' landed estate " — probably no more than 
a single field — producing a pound or two of rent, and that Lamb 
was fond of referring to the circumstance, and declaring that it 
had revolutionised his views of Property. 

The first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. — One 
of Lamb's earliest, perhaps his first sonnet, was inspired by 
this great actress. It was published, with some of Coleridge's, 
in the columns of the Morning Chronicle in 1794. 

As when a child, on some long winter's night 
Affrighted clinging to its grandam's knees 
With eager wondering and perturbed delight 
Listens strange tales of feaifnl dark decrees 
Muttered to wretch by necromantic spell; 
Or of those hags, who at the witching time 
Of miirky midnight ride the air sublime, 
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell : 
Cold Horror drinks its blood ! Anon the tear 
More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell 



394 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Of pretty babes that loved each other dear, 
Murdered by cruel Uncle's mandate fell : 
Even such the shivering joys thy tones impart, 
Even so thou, Siddons, meltest my sad heart ! 

MODERN GALLANTRY.— P. 113. 
{Loiulon Magazine, November 1822). 
Joseph Pccice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant. — Some very 
interesting particulars of the life and cliaracter of this generous 
and self-sacrificing person, in whom most unquestionably 
"manners were not idle," will be found in the Athenceum for 
the year 1841 (pp. 366 and 387), contributed by the late Miss 
Anne Manning. Thomas Edwards, author of Canons of Criti- 
cism, a very acute commentary upon Warburton's emendations 
of Shakspeare, was his uncle, Edwards was a mediocre poet, 
but his sonnets are carefully constructed on the Miltonic scheme, 
which perhaps accounts for Lamb's exaggerated epithet. The 
sonnet may be given here as at least acuriosity : — 

To Mk. J. Paice. 
Joseph, the worthy sou of worthy sire, 
Who well repay'st thy pious parents' care 
To train thee in the ways of Virtue fair. 
And early mth the Love of Truth inspire, 
What farther can my closing eyes desire 
To see, but that by wedlock thou repair 
The waste of death ; and raise a virtuous heir 
To build our House, e'er I in peace retire ? 
Youth is the time for Love : Then choose a wife, 
With prudence choose ; 'tis Nature's genuine voice ; 
And what she truly dictates must be good ; 
Neglected once that prime, our remnant life 
Is soured, or saddened, by an ill-timed choice. 
Or lonely, dull, and friendless solitude. 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.— 

P. 118. 

(London MagazUw, September 1S21.) 

Charles Lamb was born on the 10th of February 1775, in 
Crown Office Row, Temple, where Samuel Salt, a Bencher of 
the Inn, owned two sets of chambers. This was Lamb's home 
for the seven years preceding his admission into Christ's Hos- 
pital in 1782, and afterwards, in holiday seasons, till he left 
school in 1789, and later, at least till Salt's death in 1792. A 
recent editor of Lamb's works has stated that, Avith the excep- 
tion of Salt, almost all the names of Benchers given in this essay 



NOTES. 395 

are "purely imaginary." The reverse of this is the fact. All 
the names here celebrated are to be fonncl in the records of the 
honourable society. 

There when they came, whereas those hricky towers, 

— Spenser's Prothalamion, stanza viii. 

Of hiilding strong, albeit of Paper Mght. 

— I^per Buildings, facing King's Bench Walk in the Temple. 
The line is doubtless improvised for the occasion. 

That fine Elizabethan hall. — The hall of the Middle Temple. 
The fountain still plays, but "quantum mutatus." 

Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial hand. 
— Shakspeare's Sonnet, No. 104. 

" Carved it oiot quaintly in the sicn." 
— ///. Henry VI., ii. 5. 

The roguish eye of J — II. — Jekyll, the Master in Chancery. 
The wit, and friend of wits, among the old Benchers — the Sir 
George Rose of his day. Called to the Bench 1805 ; died 1837. 

Thomas Coventry, nephew.of William, fifth Earl of Coventry; 
of North Cray Place, Bexley, Kent. — Called to the Bench in 
1766 ; died in 1797. 

Samuel Salt.— C&W&d. to the Bench 1782 ; died in 1792. The 
Bencher in whom Lamb had the most peculiar interest, John 
Lamb, the father, was in the service of Salt for some five and 
forty years — he acting as clerk and confidential servant, and 
his wife as housekeeper. As we have seen, Mr. Salt occupied 
two sets of chambers in Crown Office Row, forming a substan- 
tial house. He had two indoor servants, besides John and 
Elizabeth Lamb, and kept his carriage. Salt died in 1792. 
By his will, dated 1786, he gives "To my servant, John Lamb, 
who has lived with me near forty years, " £500 South Sea stock ; 
and "to Mrs. Lamb £100 in money, well desei-ved for her care 
and attention during my illness." By a codicil, dated Decem- 
ber 20, 1787, his executors are directed to employ John Lamb 
to receive the testator's "Exchequer annuities of £210 and £14 
during their term, and to pay him £10 a-year for his trouble so 
long as he shall receive them," a delicate and ingenious way of 
retaining John Lamb in his service, as it were, after his own 
decease. By a later codicil, he gives another hundred pounds to 
Mrs. Lamb. These benefactions, and not the small pension 
erroneously stated, on the authority of Talfourd, in my memoir 
of Lamb, formed the provision made by Salt for his faithful pair 
of attendants. The appointment of Charles to the clerkship 



396 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

in the India House in 1792 must have been the last of the many 
kind acts of Samuel Salt to the family. Where the Lamb 
family moved to after Salt's death in 1792, and how they strug- 
gled on between that date and the fatal year 1796, is one of the 
unsettled points of Lamb's historj'-. Mary Lamb's skill with 
her needle was probably used as a means of increasing the 
common income. Crabb Robinson tells us of an article on 
needlework contributed by her some years later to one of the 
magazines. 

The imfortwnMte Miss Blandy. —The heroine of a cause celtbrc 
in the year 1752. Her whole story will be found, dpro2MS of 
the town of Henley, in Mr. Leslie's charming book on the 
Thames, entitled Otir River. Miss Blandy, the daughter of 
an attorney at Henley, mth good expectations fi'om her father, 
attracted the attention of an adventurer, a certain Captain 
Cranstoun. The father disapproved of the intimacy, and the 
Captain entrusted Miss Blandy with a certain powder which she 
administered to her father with a fatal result. Her defence was 
that she believed the powder to be of the nature of a love-philtre, 
which would have the effect of making her father well-affected 
towards her lover. The defence was not successful, and Miss 
Blandy was found guilty of murder, and executed at Oxford in 
April 1752. 

Susan P . — Susannah Pierson, sister of Salt's brother- 
Bencher, Peter Pierson, mentioned in this essay, and one of Salt's 
executors. By his second codicil. Salt bequeaths her, as a mark 
of regard, £500 ; his silver inkstand ; and the ' ' works of Pope, 
Swift, Shakspeare, Addison, and Steele ;" also Sherlock's Ser- 
mons (Sherlock had been Master of the Temple), and any other 
books she likes to choose out of his library, hoping that, "by 
reading and reflection," they will "make her life more com- 
fortable." How oddly touching this bequest seems to us, in 
the light thrown on it by Lamb's account of the relation between 
Salt and his friend's sister ! "What a pleasant glimpse, again, 
is here afforded of the " spacious closet of good old English 
reading" into Avhich Charles and Mary were "tumbled," as he 
told us, at an early age, when they " browsed at will upon that 
fair and wholesome pasturage." 

I hiew this Lovel. — Lamb's father, John Lamb. The sketch 
of him given in Mr. Procter's memoir of Charles, taken doubt- 
less from the portrait here mentioned, confirms the statement 
of a general resemblance to Garrick. Mrs. Arthur Tween, a 
daughter of Randal Norris, has in her possession a medallion 
portrait of Samuel Salt, executed in plaster of Paris by John 
Lamb. He published a collection of his verses, ' ' Poetical Pieces 
on several occasions," in a rough pamphlet of quarto size. A 



NOTES. 397 

few lines from the (rather doggerel) verses describing the life of 
a footman in the last century (doubtless reflecting his own 
experiences of the time when he wore " the smart new livery ") 
may be given as a sample of his efiPorts in the manner of " Swift 
and Prior." The footman has just been sent on an errand to 
inquire after the health of a friend of his mistress who has lost 
her monkey : — 

" Then up she mounts — down I descend, 
• To shake hands with particular friend ; 

And there I do some brothers meet, 

And we each other kindly greet ; 

Then cards they bring and cribbage-board, 

And I must play upon their word, 

Altho' I tell them I am sent 

To know how tli' night a lady spent. 

' Pho ! make excuse, and have one bout, 

And say the lady was gone out ; ' 

Th' advice I take, sit down and say, 

' What is the sum for which we play ? ' 

' I care not much, ' another cries, 

' But let it be for Wets and Drys.' " 

"A remnant most forlorn of tvlwi lie was.''' — One of Lamb's 
quotations from himself. It occurs in the lines (February 1797) 
"written on the day of my aunt's funeral : " — 

" One parent yet is left, — a wretched thing, 
A sad survivor of his buried wife, 
A palsy- smitten, childish, old, old man, 
A semblance most forlorn of what he was, 
A merry cheerful man. " 

John Lamb lingered till April 1799. 

Peter Picrso??-.— Called to the Bench 1800, died 1808. It will 
be seen that Salt and Pierson, though friends and contemporaries 
at the Bar, were not so as Benchers. Salt had been some years 
dead when his friend was called to the Bench. 

Dailies Barrington. — The antiquary, naturalist, and corre- 
spondent of White of Selborne. Called to the Bench in 1777, 
died 1800. 

Tliomas Barton. — Called to the Bench 1775, died 1791. 

John Read. — Called to the Bench 1792, died in 1804. 

Twopenny. — There never was a Bencher of the Inner Temple 
of this name. The gentleman here intended, Mr. Richard 
Twopeny, was a stockbroker, a member of the Kentish family 
of that name, who, being a bachelor, lived in chambers in the 
Temple. On his retirement from business he resided at West 



398 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

dialling in Kent, and died in 1809, at the age of eighty-two. 
Mr. Edward Twopeny of Woodstock, Sittingbourne, a great- 
nephew of this gentleman, remembers him well, and informs 
me that he was, as Lamb describes him, remarkably thin. 
Lamb evidently recalled him as a familiar figure in the Temple 
in his own childish days, and supposed him to have been a 
member of the Bar. Mr. Twopeny held the important position 
of stockbroker to the Bank of England. 

Jolm ^/larr?/.— Called to the Bench 1801, died in 1812. 

Pdchard Jackson. — Called to the Bench 1770, died 1787. 
This gentleman was M. P. for New Romney and a member of 
Lord Shelburne's Government in 1782. From his wide reading 
and extraordinary memory he w^as known, beyond the circle of 
his brother-Benchers, as "the omniscient." Dr. Johnson (re- 
versing the usual order of his translations) styles him the "all- 
knowing." See Boswell, under date of April 1776 :— "Ifo, 
Sir ; Mr. Thrale is to go by my advice to Mr. Jackson (the 
all-knowing), and get from him a plan for seeing the most that 
can be seen in the time that we have to travel." 

James Mingay. — Called to the Bench 1785, died 1812. Mr. 
Mingay was an eminent King's Counsel, and in his day a 
powerful rival at the Bar, of Thomas Erskine — according to an 
obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine of " a persuasive 
oratory, infinite wit, and most excellent fancy." His retort 
upon Erskine, about the knee-buckles, goes to confirm this 
verdict. 

Baron 3Iascres. — Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, a post 
which he filled for fifty years. Born 1731, died May 1824. 
He persevered to the end of his days in wearing the costume of 
the reign in which he was born. 

R. N. — Randal Norris, for many years Sub - Treasurer and 
Librarian of the Inner Temple. At the age of fourteen he was 
articled to Mr. Walls of Paper Buildings, and from that time, 
for more than half a centurj', resided in the Inner Temple. 
His wife was a native of Widford, the village adjoining Blakes- 
Avare, in Hertfordsliire, and a friend of Mrs. Field, the house- 
keeper, and there was thus a double tie connecting Randal 
Norris with Lamb's family. His name appears early in Charles's 
coiTespondence. At the season of his mother's death, he tells 
Coleridge that Mr. Norris had been more than a father to him, 
and Mrs. Norris more than a mother. Mr. Norris died in the 
Temple in January 1827, at the age of seventy-six, and was 
buried in the Temple churchyard. Talfourd misdates the event 
by a year. It Avas then that Charles Lamb wrote to Crabb 
Robinson — " In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. 



NOTES. 399 

He was iny friend and my father's fi-iend all the life I can 
remember. 1 seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. 
Those are the friendships which outlive a second generation. 
Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first 
knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to 
call me Charley now." 

GEACE BEFORE MEAT,— P. 130, 

(London Magazine, November 1821.) 

C . — Coleridge. 

C. V. L.- — Charles Valentine le Grice, Lamb's schoolfellow 
at Christ's Hospital. See the Essay on that Institution. 

Some one recalled a legeiul. — Leigh Hunt tells the story in 
his accoimt of Christ's Hospital: — "Our dress was of the 
coarsest and quaintest kind, but was respected out of doors, 
and is so. It consisted of a blue drugget gown, or body, with 
ample skirts to it ; a yellow vest underneath in winter time ; 
small clothes of Russia duck ; worsted yellow stockings ; a 
leathern girdle ; and a little black worsted cap, usually carried 
in the hand. I believe it was the ordinary dress of children in 
humble life during the reign of the Tudors. We used to flatter 
oui'selves that it was taken from the monks ; and there went a 
monstrous tradition, that at one period it consisted of blue 
velvet -with silver buttons. It was said, also, that during the 
blissful era of the blue velvet, we had roast mutton for supper ; 
but that the small clothes not being then in existence, and the 
mutton suppers too luxurious, the eatables were given up for the 
ineflFables." 

The following beautiful passage from the Recreations and 
Studies by a Ooiintry Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century (John 
Murray, 1882), shows that others, besides Lamb, had thought 
the main thought of this essay. The writer is describing, in 
1781, the drive from Huddersfield, along the banks of the 
Calder : — "I never felt anything so fine : I shall remember it 
and thank God for it as long as I live. I am sorry I did not 
think to say grace after it. Are we to be grateful for nothing 
but beef and pudding? to thank God for life, and not for 
happiness?" 

DREAM CHILDREN ; A REVERIE.— P. 137. 

(London Magazine, January 1822.) 

The mood in which Lamb was prompted to this singularly 
affecting confidence was clearly due to a family bereavement, a 
montli or two before the date of the essay. I may be allowed 



400 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to repeat Avords of my own, used elsewhere, on this subject. 
" Lamb's elder brother John was then lately dead. A letter to 
Wordsworth, of March 1822, mentions his death as even then 
recent, and speaks of a certain ' deadness to everything ' which 
the wi'iter dates from that event. The ' broad, burly, jovial ' 
John Lamb (so Talfourd describes him) had lived his own easy 
prosperous life up to this time, not altogether avoiding social 
relations with his brother and sister, but evidently absorbed to 
the last in his own interests and pleasures. The death of this 
brother, wholly unsympathetic as he was with Charles, served 
to bring home to him his loneliness. He was left in the world 
with but one near relation, and that one too often removed from 
him for months at a time by the saddest of afflictions. No 
wonder if he became keenly aware of his solitude. " The emotion 
discernible in this essay is absolutely genuine ; the blending of 
fact with fiction in the details is curiously arbitrary. 

Their great - grandmother Field. — Lamb's gi-andmother, 
ilary Field, for more than fifty years housekeeper at Blakes- 
ware, a dower-house of the Hertfordshire family of Plumers, a 
few miles from "Ware. William Plumer, who represented his 
county for so many years in Parliament, was still living, and 
Lamb may have disguised the whereabouts of the ' ' great house " 
out of consideration for him. Why he substituted Norfolk is 
only matter for conjecture. Perhaps there were actually scenes 
from the old legend of the Children in the Wood carved upon 
a chimneypiece at Blakesware ; possibly there was some old 
story in the annals of the Plumer family touching the myste- 
rious disappearance of two children, for which it pleased Lamb 
to substitute the story of the familiar ballad. His grandmother, 
as he has told us in his lines The Grandame, was deeply versed 
"in anecdote domestic." 

Which afterwards came to decay, aiidtvas nearly puUed dovm. 
— The dismantling of the Blakesware house had therefore begun, 
it appears, before the death of William Plumer. Cussans, in 
his History of Hertfordshire, says it was pulled down in 1822. 
Perhaps the complete demolition was not carried out till after 
Mr. Plumer's death in that year. The "other house" was 
Gilston, the principal seat of the Plumers, some miles distant. 
See notes on the essay Blakesmoor in Hertfordshire. 

And then I told how, icJien she came to die. — Mrs. Field died 
in the summer of 1792, and was buried in the adjoining church- 
yard of Widford. Her gravestone, with the name and date of 
death, August 5, 1792, is still to be seen, and is one of the few 
tangible memorials of Lamb's family history still existing. By 
a curious fatality, it narrowly escaped destruction in the great 



NOTES. 401 

gale of October 1881, when a tree was blown clown across it, 
considerably reducing its proportions. 

John L. — Of course John Lamb, the brother. Whether 
Charles was ever a "lame-footed" boy, through some tempor- 
ary cause, we cannot sa}''. We know that at the time of the 
mother's death John Lamb was suffering from an injury to his 
foot, and made it (after his custom) an excuse for not exerting 
himself unduly. See the letter of Charles to Coleridge written 
at th*^ time. "My brother, little disposed (I speak not with- 
out tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and 
infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such 
duties." 

/ courted the fair Alice W — n. — In my memoir of Charles 
Lamb, I have given the reasons for identifying Alice W — n 
with the Anna of the early sonnets, and again with the form 
and features of the village maiden described as Rosamund 
Gray. The girl who is celebrated under these various names 
won the heart of Charles Lamb while he was yet little more 
than a boy. He does not care to conceal from us that it was 
in Hertfordshire, while under his grandmother's roof, that he 
first met her. The Beauty " with the yellow Hertfordshire hair 
— so like my Alice," is how he describes the portrait in the 
picture gallery at Blakesmoor. Moreover, the "winding wood- 
walks green" where he roamed mth his Anna, can hardly be 
unconnected Avith the "walks and windings of Blakesmoor," 
apostrophised at the close of that beautiful essay. And there 
is a group of cottages called Blenheim, not more than half a 
mile from the site of Blakesware House, where the original 
Anna, according to the traditions of the village, resided. 
"Alice W — n" is one of Lamb's deliberate inventions. In 
the key to the initials employed by him in his essays, he ex- 
plains that Alice W — n stood for Alice Winterton, but that the 
name was "feigned." Anna was, in fact, the nearest clue to 
the real name that Lamb has vouchsafed. Her actual name 
was, I have the best reason to believe, Ann Simmons. She 
afterwards married Mr. Bartram, the pawnbroker of Princes 
Street, Leicester Square. The complete history of this episode 
in Lamb's life mil probably never come to light. There are 
many obvious reasons why any idea of marriage should have 
been indefinitely abandoned. The poverty in Lamb's home is 
one such reason ; and one, even more decisive, may have been 
the discovery of the taint of madness that was inherited, in 
more or less degi-ee, by all the children. Why Lamb chose the 
particular alias of Winterton, under which to disguise his early 
love, will never be known. It was a name not unfamiliar to 
him, being that of the old steward in Colman's play of the Iron 

2 D 



402 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Chest, a part created by Lamb's favourite comedian Dodd. 
The play was first acted in 1796, about the time when the final 
separation of the lovers seems to have taken place. 

In illustration of Lamb's fondness for children, I have the 
pleasure of adding the following pretty letter to a child, not 
hitherto printed. It was written to a little girl (one of twin- 
sisters), the daughter of Kenney the dramatist, after Lamb 
and his sister's visit to the Kenneys at Versailles in September 
1822. The letter has been most kindly placed at my disposal 
by my friend Mr. W. J. Jeaffreson, whose mother was the 
Sophy of the letter. At the close of a short note to Mrs. 
Kenney, Lamb adds : — " Pray deliver what follows to my dear 
wife, Sophy : — 

' ' My dear Sophy — The few short days of connubial felicity 
which I passed with you among the pears and apricots of Ver- 
sailles were some of the happiest of my life. But they are flown ! 

"And your other half, your dear co-twin — that she-you — 
that almost equal sharer of my affections — you and she are my 
better half, a quarter apiece. She and you are my pretty six- 
pence, you the head, and she the tail. Sure, Heaven that made 
you so alike must pardon the error of an inconsiderate moment, 
should I for love of you, love her too well. Do you think laws 
were made for lovers ? I think not, 

"Adieu, amiable pair. 

' ' Yours, and yours, 

"C. Lamb. 
" P.S. — I inclose half a dear kiss apiece for you." 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.— P. 142. 

(London Magazine, March 1822.) 

B. i?:— Barron Field. Born October 23, 1786. He was 
educated for the Bar and practised for some years, going the 
Oxford Circuit. In 1816 he married, and went out to New 
South Wales as Judge of the Supreme Court at Sydney. In 
1824 he returned to England, having resigned his judgeship ; 
but two or three years afterwards he was appointed Chief- Justice 
of Gibraltar. He died at Torquay in 1846. His brother, Francis 
John Field, was a fellow-clerk of Charles Lamb's at the India 
House, which was perhaps the origin of the acquaintance. 
Barron Field edited a volume of papers {Geographical Memoirs) 
on New South Wales for Murray, and the appendix contains 
some short poems, entitled First-Fruits of Australian Poetry. 



NOTES. 403 

Some papers of his are to be found in Leigh Hunt's Reflector, 
to which Lamb also contributed. 

One of Mrs. Eoioe's superscriptions. — Mrs. Elizabeth Eowe 
(1674-1737), an exemplary person, and now forgotten moralist 
in verse and prose. Among other works she ^^^'ote, Friendship 
in Death— in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living. The 
following are from the "superscriptions" of these letters: — 
■'To^ Sylvia from Alexis;" "From Oleander to his Brother, 
endeavouring to reclaim him from his extravagances ; " "To 
Emilia from Delia, giving her a description of the invisible 
regions, and the happy state of the inhabitants of Paradise." 

The late Lord C. — The second Lord Canielford, killed in a 
duel with Mr. Best in 1804. The day before his death he gave 
directions that his body should be removed "as soon as maybe 
convenient to a country far distant ! to a spot not near the 
haunts of men, but where the surrounding scenery may smile 
upon my remains. It is situated on the borders of the lake of 
St. Lampierre, in the Canton of Berne, and three trees stand in 
the particular spot." The centi'e tree he desired might be taken 
up, and his body being there deposited immediately replaced. 
At the foot of this tree, his lordship added, he had formerly' 
passed many solitary hours, contemplating the mutability of 
human affairs. — Annual Register for 1804. 

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away. 
— Lyddas, quoted incorrectly, as usual. 

J. W. — James White, Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hos- 
pital. Died in 1820. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. —P. 148. 
(Londo7i Magazine, May 1822.) 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

— Milton, Comus, line 223. 

3fy pleasant friend Jem White. — James White, a schoolfellow 
of Lamb's at Christ's Hospital, and the author of a Shakspearian 
squib, suggested by the Ireland Foi'geries — " Original Letters, 
3tc., of Sir John Falstaff and his friends, now first made public 
by a gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine 
manuscripts which have been in the possession of the Quickly 
family near four hundred years." It was published in 1795, 



404 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

and Soufhey believed that Lamb had in some way a hand in it. 
The Preface in particular bears some traces of his peculiar vein, 
but Lamb's enthusiastic recommendation of the book to his 
friends seems to show that it was in the main the production of 
James White. The jcii W esprit is not more successful than such 
parodies usually are. White took to journalism, in some fonn, 
and was at the time of his death in March 1820 an "agent of 
Provincial newspapers. " His annual supper to the little climb- 
ing-boys was imitated by many charitable persons in London 
and other large towns. 

Our trusty companion, Bigod. — Lamb's old friend and editor 
John Fenwick, of the Albion. See Essay on the Two Races of 
Men. 

Golden lads and lasses must. 
—Cymbeline, Act iv. Sc. 2. 

Golden lads and girls all must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. 

It is curious that in this essay Lamb does not even allude to 
the grave subject of the cruelties incident to the climbing-boys' 
occupation — a question which for some years ]Dast had attracted 
the attention of philanthropic persons, in and out of Parliament. 
A year or two later, however, he made a characteristic offei'ing 
to the cause. In 1824 James Montgomery of Sheffield edited a 
volume of Prose and Verse — The Uliimniey-Sweeper's Friend, aiul 
Glimbing -boy's Album, to which many Avriters of the day con- 
tributed. Lamb, who had been applied to, sent Blake's poem 
— The Chimney-Sweeper. It was headed, ' ' Communicated bj'^ 
Mr. Charles Lamb, from a very rare and curious little work " 
— doubtless a true description of the Songs of Innocence in 
1824. It is noteworthy that, before sending it, this incorrigible 
joker could not refrain from quietly altering Blake's " Little Tom 
Dacre" into "Little Tom Toddy." 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS, 

IN THE METROPOLIS. — P. 156. 
(^London Magazine, June 1822.) 

Fach degree of it is mocked by its "oieighbour grice." A 
reference, apparently, to Timon of Athens, iv. 3. 

' ' every grise of fortune 

Is smoothed by that below." 

TJnfastidious Vincent Bourne (1697-1747). — The "dear Vinny 
Bourne " of Cowper, who liad been his pupil at Westminster. 



NOTES. 405 

Cowper, it will be remembered, translated many of Bourne's 
Latin verses. 

B , the mild Rector of- . — In Lamb's "Key" to the 

Initials, etc. , used in his essays, this is affirmed to be a quite 
imaginary personage. 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.— P. 164. 

(London Magazine, September 182'2.) 

The tradition as to the origin of cooking, Avhich is of course 
the salient feature of this essay, had been communicated to 
Lamb, he here tells us, by his friend M., Thomas Mannings 
whose acquaintance he had made long ago at Cambridge, and 
who since those days had spent much of his life in exploring 
China and Thibet. Lamb says the same thing in one of his 
private letters, so we may accept it as a literal fact. The 
question therefore arises whether Manning had found the legend 
existing in any form in China, or wliether Lamb's detail of the 
Chinese manuscript is Avholly fantastic. It is at least certain 
that the story is a very old one, and appears as early as the 
third century, in the writings of Porphyry of Tyre. The follow- 
ing passage, a literal translation from the Treatise Be Ahstincntid 
of that ]")hilosopher, sets forth one form of the legend : — 

" Asclepiades, in his work on Cyprus and Phoenice, writes as 
follows : — 'Originally it was not usual for anything having life 
to be sacrificed to the gods — not that there was any law on the 
subject, for it was supposed to be forbidden by the law of 
nature. At a certain period, however (tradition says), when 
blood was required in atonement for blood, the first victim was 
sacrificed, and was entirely consumed by fire. On one occasion, 
in later times, when a sacrifice of this kind was being offered, 
and the victim in process of being burned, a morsel of its flesh 
fell to tlie ground. The priest, who was standing by, imme- 
diately picked it up, and on removing his fingers from the burnt 
flesh, chanced to put them to his mouth, in order to assuage 
the pain of the burn. As soon as he had tasted the burnt flesh 
lie conceived a strange longing to eat of it, and accordingly 
l)egan to eat the flesh himself, and gave some to his wife also. 
Pygmalion, on hearing of it, directed that the man and his wife 
should be put to death, by being hurled headlong from a rock, 
and appointed another man to the priest's ofiice. When, more- 
over, not long after this man was off'eriug the same sacrifice, 
and in the same way ate of the flesh, he was sentenced to the 
same punishment. When, however, the thing made further 
progress, and men continued to offer sacrifice, and in order to 
gratify their appetite could not refrain from the flesh, but 
regularly adopted the habit of eating it, all punishment for so 
doing ceased to be inflicted. " 



406 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Manning may liave been aware of this passage, and have told 
the story in his own language to Charles Lamb. It is worth 
noticing that in 1823, the year following the appearance of this 
essay, Thomas Tayloi', the Platonist, published a translation of 
certain Treatises of Porphyry, including the De Ahstinentid. 
It is possible that Manning may, on some occasion, have learned 
the tradition from Taylor. 

Recent editors of Lamb have asserted, without offering any 
sufficient evidence, that he owed the idea of this rhapsody on 
the Pig to an Italian Poem, by Tigrinio Bistonio, pubhshed in 
1761, at Modena, entitled Gli Elogi del Porco (Tigrinio Bistonio 
was the pseudonym of the Abate Giuseppe Ferrari). Mr. Richard 
Garnett of the British Museum, to whom I am indebted for 
calling my attention to the passage in Porphyry, has kindly 
examined for me the Italian poem in question, and assures me 
that he can find in it no resemblance whatever to Lamb's treat- 
ment of the same theme. There is no affectation in Lamb's 
avowal of his fondness for this delicacy. Towards the close 
of his life, however. Roast Pig declined somewhat in his 
favour, and was superseded by hare, and other varieties of 
game. Indeed Lamb was as fond of game as Cowper was of 
fish ; and as in Cowper's case, his later letters constantly open 
with acknowledgments of some recent offering of the kind from 
a good-natured correspondent. 

Ere sin could hliglit or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care. 

— From Coleridge's Epitapli on an Infant. It must have been 
with unusual glee that Lamb here borrowed half of his friend's 
quatrain. The epitaph had appeared in the very earliest volume 
to which he was himself a contributor — the little volume of 
Coleridge's poems, published in 1796, by Joseph Cottle, of 
Bristol. The lines are there allotted a whole page to them- 
selves. 

It was over London Bridge. — The reader will not fail to note 
the audacious indifference to fact that makes Lamb assert in a 
parenthesis that his school was on the other side of London 
Bridge, and that he was afterwards ' ' at St. Omer's. " 



ON THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE.— P. 172. 

(London Magazine, September 1822.) 

The essay had previously appeared, in 1811, in Leigh Hunt's 

llcjiedor. 



NOTES. 407 

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.— P. 180. 

(London Magcalne, February IS'22.) 

This essay was originally one of three which appeared in 
the London under the title of The Old Actors. When Lamb col- 
lected and edited his essays for publication in a volume in 1823, 
he abridged and rearranged them under different headings. Many 
of Lamb's favourites, here celebrated, had died or left the stage 
almost before Lamb entered manhood, showing how early his 
critical faculty had matured. 

Bensley, whose performance of Malvolio he has analysed in 
such a masterly way, retired from his profession in 1796, and 
Palmer in 1798. Parsons died in 1795, and Dodd in the autumn 
of 1796, three months after quitting the stage. Suett survived 
till 1805, and Mrs. Jordan till 1816. 

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 

CENTURY.— P. 192. 

{London Magazine, April 1822.) 

Originally the second part of the essay on The Old Actors. 
This essay is noteworthy as having provoked a serious remon- 
strance from Lord Macaulay, in reviewing Leigh Hunt's edition 
of the Restoration Dramatists. Lamb's apology for the moral 
standards of Congreve and Wycherley is simply an exercise of 
ingenuity, or rather, as Hartley Coleridge pointed out, is an 
apology for himself — Charles Lamb — who found himself quite 
able to enjoy the unparalleled wit of Congi-eve without being in 
any way thrown off his moral balance. It is in a letter to 
Moxon on Leigh Hunt's proposed edition that Hartley Cole- 
ridge's comment occurs. He writes : "Nothing more or better 
can be said in defence of these writers than what Lamb has said 
in his delightful essay on The Old Actors ; which is, after all, 
rather an apology for the audiences who applauded and himself 
who delighted in their plays, than for the plays themselves. . . . 
But Lamb always took things by the better handle." 

ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.— P. 201. 
{London Magazine, October 1822.) 

CocHetop.— In O'Keefe's farce of Modern Antiques ; or, The 
Me7'ry Mourners, 

There the antic sate 

Mocking our state. 
— Adapted from Eichard II., Act iii. Sc, 2. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



The Second Series of Elia was published in a collected form by- 
Mr.' Moxon in 1833. It was furnished -with a Preface, purport- 
ing to be written by "a friend of the late Elia," announcing 
his death, and commenting freely on his chai'acter and habits. 
This Preface (wi-itten, of course, by Lamb himself) is placed in 
the present edition at the beginning of the volume. Elia is 
here supposed to have died in the interval between the pu.blica- 
tion of the First and Second Series. From the opening sentences 
we should conclude that it was at first intended as a postscript 
to the Fii'st Series, and indeed it originally appeared in the 
London Magazine for January 1823. But this design, if ever 
entertained, was not carried out. 

I have spoken in my Introduction of the estimate here 
pronounced by Lamb himself on his own ^^1■itings, as in my 
memoir of Lamb I had occasion to deal with the same Preface 
as thromng light on the causes of his unpopularity. In each 
case he shows a rare degree of self-knowledge. If they stood 
alone they would entirely account for Carlyle's harsh verdict. 
' ' Few professed literati were of his councils, " and he would be 
little disjiosed to show the serious side of himself, still less the 
better side of his humour, to such as Carlyle. To the evidence 
of such friends as Hood, Patmore, and Procter, confirming 
Lamb's own account, I may here add a piece of fresh testimony 
from Hazlitt. It occurs in the essay "On CofFee-House Politi- 
cians," one of the TaMc-Talk series : — 

"I ■R-ill, however, admit that the said Elia is the worst com- 
pany in the world in bad company, if it be granted me that in 
good company he is nearly the best that can be. He is one of 
those of whom it may be said. Tell me your eom^mny and Fll tell 
you your manners. He is the creature of sympathy, and makes 
good whatever opinion you seem to entertain of him. He can- 
not outgo the apprehensions of the circle, and invariably acts 
up or doAvn to the point of refinement or vulgarity at which 
they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in exaggerating 
the prejudices of strangers against him, a pride in confirming 



NOTES. 409 

the prepossessions of friends. In wliatever scale of intellect lie 
is placed, lie is as lively or as stupid as the rest can be for their 
lives. If you think him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more 
and more so every minute, a la folic, till he is a wonder gazed 
at by all. Set him against a good wit and a ready apprehension, 
and he brightens more and more — 

' Or like a gate of steel 
Froutiug the sun, receives and renders back 
Its figure and its heat.' " 



BLAKESMOOR IN H— SHIIIE.— P. 205. 
(London Magazine, September 1S24.) 

Blakesmoor, as has been already observed, -was Blakesware, 
a dower-house of the Plumers, about five miles from Ware, in 
Hertfordshire. If there were ever any doubt on the subject. 
Lamb's own words are decisive. In a letter to Bernard Barton, 
of August 10, 1827, occurs the folloxs-ing charming passage : — 
"You have well described your old-fashioned paternal hall. 
Is it not odd that every one's recollections are of some such 
place? I had my BlakesAvare {'Blakesmoor' in the London). 
Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion, lietter if 
un- or partially-occujued : jieopled with the siiirits of deceased 
members of the county and justices of the Quorum. "Would I 
were bmied in the peopled solitudes of one with my feelings at 
seven years old ! Those marble busts of the emperors, they 
seemed as if thej^ were to stand for ever, as they had stood 
from the living days of Eome, in that old marble hall, and I to 
partake of their pennanency. Eternity was, while I thought 
not of time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled 
doAvn, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and 
its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that, chu'ping 
about the gi'ounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness." 

In face of this letter, it might seem sti'auge that most ol' 
Lamb's editors have unliesitatinglj^ asserted that the original 
of Lamb's Blakesmoor was Gilston, the other seat of the 
Plumers, near Harlow, in the same county. The origin of the 
mistake is to be found in the history of the Plumer property, 
after the death of ]\Ir. "William Plumer, the member for Highani 
Ferrers, in 1822. Mr. Plumer died without children, and left 
his estates at Blakesware and Gilston to his wido\\'. The house 
at Blakesware, which, as we have seen, had been partially dis- 
mantlcil in Mr. Plumer's lifetime, was now pulled to the gi-ounrl 
— its principal contents having been already removed to the 



410 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

other house at Gilston. It was after its final demolition that 
Lamb paid the visit here recorded, to look once more on the 
remains of a place associated with so many happy memories. 
The widow, Mrs. Plumer, not long after her first husband's 
death, married Commander Lewin of the Royal Navy, and 
finally, after his death, married for the third time, in 1828, Mr. 
Ward, author of the once popular novel Tremaine. On marrjdng 
Mrs. Plumer Lewin Mr. Ward received the royal permission to 
take and use the name of Plumer as a prefix to that of Ward. 
Mr. and Mrs. Plumer Ward continued to live at the family 
residence of the Plumers at Gilston. 

Mr. P. G. Patmore — the father of the present Mr. Coventry 
Patmore — made the acquaintance of Mr. Plumer Ward in 1824, 
and in a book, entitled My Friends and Acquaintance, pub- 
lished in 1854, gave an interesting account of Mr. Ward, 
together with a full description, supplied by that gentleman 
himself, of the furniture and general arrangements of Gilston 
House. Among these appear the Twelve Caesars and the 
Marble Hall, and other features of the old house at Blakesware, 
familiar to readers of Charles Lamb, which had been in fact 
removed from the one house to the other. Mr. Patmore, ap- 
parently ignorant of the existence of any other residence belong- 
ing to the Plumers, at once assumed that Gilston had been the 
house celebrated by Lamb, and announced the discovery with 
some natural exiiltation. From that time Mr. Patmore 's version 
of the facts has been generally accepted. Gilston House was 
pulled down in 1851. The contents, except such as were used 
for the new house erected at a short distance, were sold by 
auction. The Twelve Csesars, and many other things, went to 
Wardour Street. 

Nothing remains of Blakesware save the "firry wilderness " 
and the faint undulations in the grassy meadow, where the 
ample pleasure garden rose backwards in triple terraces. But 
the rural tranquillity of the surrounding country is still un- 
changed, and that depth and warmth of colouring in the foliage 
that gives to the Hertfordshire landscape a character all its 
own. It is a day well spent to make an excursion from the 
country town of Ware, and wander over the site of the old 
place, and among the graves of Widford churchyard. It will 
be felt then how, with this " cockney of cockneys," the beauty 
of an English home — a "haunt of ancient peace " — had passed 
into his life and become a part of his genius and himself. 

/ was the true descendant of those old W s. — Lamb dis- 
guises the family of Plumer under this change of initial. He 
certainly did not mean the Wards — ^Mr. Ward not having 
become connected with the family of Plumer till several years 
later than the date of this essay. 



NOTES. 411 

So like my Alice ! — See notee on Dream Children in tlie first 
series of the essays. 

Compare with this essay Mary Lamb's story of "the Young 
Mahomedan" in Mrs. Leicester's School. Blakesware is there 
again described, as remembered by Mary Lamb when a child. 



^ POOR RELATIONS. -P. 210. 

{London Magazine, May 1823.) 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play. — See Vanbrugh's comedy, 
The Confederacy. 

Poor W . — The Favell of the essay, Christ's Hospital Fivc- 

and-thirty Years Ago. Lamb, in his " Key " to the initials used by 
him, has written against the initial F. , there employed : ' ' Favell 
left Cambridge, because he was asham'd of his father, who was 
a house - painter there." He was a Grecian in the school in 
Tiamb's time, and when at Cambridge Avrote to the Duke of 
York for a commission in the army, which was sent him. 
Lamb here changes both his friend's name and his University. 

Like Satan, "knew his mounted sign — and fled." — See the 
concluding lines of Paradise Lost, Book iv., of which this is 
a more than usually free adaptation. In the incident referred 
to, the angel Gabriel and Satan are on the point of engaging in 
struggle, when 

" The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, 
Hmig forth in heaven his golden scales." 

Satan's attention being called to the sight, 

" The fiend looked up, and knew 

His mounted scale aloft : nor more : but fled 
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night." 

DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 

—P. 218. 
(Londcm Magazine, July 18S2.) 

The ivretched Malone. — This happened in 1793, on occasion 
of Malone's visit to Stratford to examine the municipal and 
other records of that town, for the purposes of his edition of 
Shakspeare. 

Martin B . — Martin Charles Burney, the only son of 

Admiral Burney, and one of Lamb's life-long friends. Lamb 
dedicated to him the second volume of his collected writings in 



412 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

1818 iu a prefatory sonnet, in which he says — 

' ' In all my threadings of this worldly maze 
(And I have watched thee almost from a child), 
Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, 
I have not found a whiter soul than thine." 

Martin Burney was originally an attorney, but left that 
branch of the profession for the Bar, where, however, he was 
not successful. Mr. Burney died in London in 1852. 

A quaint poetess of otir day. — Mary Lamb. The lines will 
be found in Charles and Mary Lamb's Poetry for Children. 



STAGE ILLUSION.— P. 225. 
[Lonifm Maga-ine, August 1825.) 

TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTOK— P. 229. 

(EnglishTiian's Magazine, August 1831.) . 

Up thither like aerial vapours fly. 

— A parody of the well-known description of the Limbo of 
Vanity in the third book of the Paradise Lost. 



ELLISTONIANA. — P. 231. 

(Englishman's Magazine, August 1831.) 

G. D. — George Dyer. 

Sir A C . — Sir Anthony Carlisle, the surgeon. 

These two papers were prompted by the death of the po}iular 
comedian in July 1831. 

THE OLD ilARGATE HOY.— P. 237. 

{London Magazine, July 1823.) 

Charles and Mary Lamb had actuallj^, as hei'e stated, passed a 
week's holiday together at Margate, when the former was quite 
a boy. In his early days of authorship Charles had utilised the 
experience for a sonnet, one of the first he published — ' ' written 
at midnight by the sea-side after a voyage." It is amusing to 
note these two different treatments of the same theme : — • 



NOTES. 413 

" winged bark ! liow swift along the night 
Passed thy proud keel ; nor shall I let go by 
Lightly of that dread hour the memory, 
When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood 
Unbonneted, and gazed upon the flood." 

^' For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape." 
— TJ^omson's Seasons — " Summer," 1. 1002. 

"Be hut as huggs tofearen habes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral." 
— Spenser, Fairy Queen, Book ii. Canto xii. 

" The daugJiters of Clieapside and wives of Lomhard Street." — 
Imperfectly remembered from the Ode to Master Anthony Staff oirl, 
by Thomas Randolph (1605-1635) :— 

There from the tree 
We'll cherries pluck, and pick the strawberry ; 

And every day 
Go see the wholesome country girls make hay, 

Whose brown hath livelier grace 

Than any painted face 

That I do know 

Hyde Park can show. 
Wliere I had rather gain a kiss than meet 

(Though some of them in greater state 

Might court my love with plate) 
The beauties of the Cheap, and wives of Lombard Street. 



THE CONVALESCENT.— P. 246. 
{London Magazine, July 1S25.) 

Lamb had an illness of the kind here described in the winter 
of 1824-25, and the condition in which it left him seems to 
have been one of the causes of his proposed retirement from the 
India House. As with all the other essays which savour of the 
autobiographical, the freshness and precision of the experience 
is one of its srreat charms. 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.— P. 251. 

(New Monthly Magazine, May 1S26.) 

" So Strong a icit," says Cowley. — From Cowley's fine lines — 
a true " In Memoriam " — On the death of Mr. William Hervey. 



414 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

The covimon run of La/n£s 9ioi;efo. ^- Better known as tlie 
novels of the Mineira Press, from which Lane the publisher 
issued innumerable works. 

That wonderful episode of the Cane of Mamtnon. — See Fairy 
Queen, Book ii. Canto vii. , the Legend of Sir Guyon. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON.— P. 254. 
(London Magazine, Novemtier 1824.) 

It has been suggested that this exquisite character -sketch 
may have been taken from Lamb's old friend Mr. Randal ISTorris, 
of the Inner Temple. An obvious objection to this theory — 
that Mr. Norris was still living when the sketch appeared (he 
did not die till 1827) — is not so conclusive as it might seem. 
Lamb was in the habit of describing living persons with a 
surprising frankness. Tlie account of James Elia, for example, 
in My Relations, was written and published in his brother's 
lifetime. Mr. Norris had two daughters, and although Sub- 
Treasurer to the Inner Temple, was never apparently in very 
flourishing circumstances. The very unlikeness of most of the 
incidents here recorded to those of Randal Norris's actual life, is 
quite after Lamb's custom. Mr. Norris lived and died in the 
Temple ; he was not "steeped in poverty to the lips," and his 
wife was not a Scotchwoman, but a native of Widford, in 
Hertfordshire, and a friend of old Mrs. Field. Lamb may have 
introduced the significant reference to the wedding-day on 
purpose to amuse his sister. When Randal Norris was married 
(his daughter tells me) Mary Lamb was bridesmaid, and the 
happy pair, in company with Miss Lamb, spent the day together 
at Richmond. 

Wlien we came down through Glasgow town. 
— From the beautiful old ballad, a special favourite with Lamb, 

" Waly, waly, up the bank, 
And waly, waly, down the brae." 

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.— P. 259. 
(London Magazine, May 1825). 

An account, substantially true to facts, of Lamb's retirement 
from the India House. This event occurred on the last Tuesday 
of March 1825, and Lamb, after his custom, proceeded to make 
it a subject for his next essay of Elia. He here transforms the 
directors of the India House into a private firm of merchants. 
The names Boldero, Merryweathei', and the others, were 



NOTES. 415 

not those of directors of the company at the time of Lamb's 
retirement. Lamb retired on a pension of £450, being two- 
thirds of his salary at that date. Nine pounds a year were 
deducted to assure a pension to Mary Lamb in the event of her 
surviving her brother. "Here am I," writes Charles to Words- 
worth shortly afterwards, "after tliirty-three years' slavery, 
sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock, this finest of all April 
mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the remainder of 
my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity 
and'starved at ninety. " 

that/s horn and has Ms years come to Mm, 

In some green desert. 

— Inaccurately quoted from Middleton's Mayor of Queenboro\ 
Act i. Sc. 1. It should be " in a rough desart. " 

A Tragedy hj Sir Robert Howard. — The lines are from The 
Vestal Virgin, or the Roman Ladies, Act v. Sc. 1. Sir Robert 
Howard (1626-1698) was Dryden's brother-in-law, and joint 
author with him of the Indian Queen. 

As low as to the fiends. — From the dramatic fragment, con- 
cerning Priam's slaughter, declaimed by the player in Hamlet. 

Of Lamb's fellow-clerks in the India House, referred to here 

by their initials, Ch was a Mr. Chambers, PI was W. 

D. Plumley, the son of a silversmith in Cornhill, and Do a 

Mr. Henry Dodwell, evidently one of Lamb's most intimate 
friends in the office. Their names occur together in an unpub- 
lished letter of Lamb's to Mr. Dodwell, now lying before me. 
It is addressed " H. Dodwell, Esq., India House, London. (In 
his absence may be opened by Mr. Chambers.) " The letter is 
so characteristic that I may be allowed to quote some passages. 
It is written from Calne in Wiltshire, where Lamb was spending 
his summer holiday, in July 1816 : — 

" My dear Fellow — I have been in a lethargy this long while 
and forgotten London, Westminster, Marybone, Paddington ; 
tSiey all went clean out of my head, till happening to go to 
a neighbour's in this good borough of Calne, for want of whist- 
players we fell upon Commerce. The word awoke me to a re- 
membrance of my professional avocations and the long-continued 
strife which I have been these twenty-four years endeavoming 
to compose between those grand Irreconcileables — Cash and Com- 
merce. I instantly called for an almanack, which, with some 
difficulty was procured at a fortune-teller's in the vicinity (for 
the happy holiday people here having nothing to do keep no 
account of time), and found that by dint of duty I must attend 
in Leadenhall on Wednesday morning next, and shall attend 



416 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

accordingly. . . . Adieu ! Ye fields, ye shepherds and — herdesses, 
and dairies and cream-pots, and fairies, and dances upon the green. 
I come ! I come ! Don't drag me so hard by the hair of my 
head, Genius of British India ! I know my hour is come — 
Faustus must give up his soul, Lucifer, Mephistopheles ! 
Can you make out what all this letter is about ? I am afraid 
to look it over. Ch. Lamb. 

"Calne, Wilts. Friday, July something. Old Style, 1816. 
No new style here — all the styles are old, and some of the gates 
too for that matter." 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.— P. 267. 

(_Neiu Monthly Magazine, March 1826.) 

This essay, as originally published, formed one of the series 
of Popular Fallacies — with the title, "That my Lord Shaftes- 
bury and Sir William Temple are models of the Genteel Style 
of Writing." 

My Lord Shaftesiury.— Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third 
Earl of Shaftesbury, and author of the Characteristics. In his 
essay on Books and Heading Lamb had said, " I can read anj'- 
thing which I call a book. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for 
me, nor Jonathan Wild too low." The essays of Temple here 
cited arff those Of Gardening, Of Health and Long Life, The 
Cure of the Gout by Moxa, and Of Poetry. 



BARBARA S .—P. 272. 

(London Magazine, April 1S25.) 

The note appended by Lamb to this essay, as to the heroine 
being named Street, and having three times changed her name 
by successive marriages, is one of the most elaborate of his 
fictions. The real heroine of the story, as admitted by Lamb 
at the time, was the admirable comedian, Fanny Kelly, an 
attached friend of Charles and Mary Lamb, who has just died 
(December 1882) at the advanced age of ninety-two. In the 
year 1875 Miss Kelly furnished Mr. Charles Kent, who was 
editing the centenary edition of Lamb's works, with her own 
interesting version of the anecdote. It was in 1799, when 
Fanny Kelly was a child of nine, that the incident occurred, 
not at the old Bath Theatre, but at Drury Lane, where she had 
been admitted as a " miniature chorister," at a salary of a pound 
a week. After his manner. Lamb has changed every detail — 
the heroine, the site of the theatre, the amount of the salary, 



NOTES. 417 

the name of the treasurer. Even following Charles Lamb, Miss 
Kelly has told her own story with much graphic power. 

Miss Kelly, with the "divine plain face," was a special 
favourite of Lamb's. See his sonnets "To Miss Kelly," and 
"To a celebrated female performer in The Blind Boy." 

Slie would have done the elder child in Morton^ s pathetic after- 
piece to the life. — This is an ingenious way of intimating that 
]\Iiss lielly did play the elder child in the Children in the Wood. 
The drama was first produced in 1793. The incident of the 
roast-fowl and the spilt salt, recorded later on, occurs in the 
last scene of this play. The famished children, just rescued from 
the wood, are fed by the faithful Walter with a roast-chicken, 
over which he has just before, in his agitation, upset the salt-box. 

When she tised to play the fart of the Little Son to Mrs. 
Porter's Isabella. — See Crabb Robinson's version of this anecdote 
{Diaries, iii. 19). — " She (Miss Kelly) related that when, as Con- 
stance, Mrs. Siddons wept over her, her collar was wet with 
Mrs. Siddons's tears. " 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.— P. 278. 
(London Magazine, October 1S23.) 

The concluding paragraphs of Lamb's letter to Southey, 
remonstrating with hitn for his remarks upon certain character- 
istics of Lamb's writings. The Quarterly Review for January 
1823 contained an article by Southey on Bishop Gregoire and 
the spread of the Theo - philanthropists in France. The first 
series of Elia was then on the point of being published in book 
form, and Southey thought to do the book a good turn by pay- 
ing it an incidental compliment. Having to deal with the 
spread of free-thought in England, Southey went on to say that 
unbelief might rob men of hope, but could not banish their 
fears. "There is a remarkable proof of this," he added, "in 
Elia's essays, a book which wants only a sounder religious 
feeling, to be as delightful as it is original," and proceeded to 
qiiote from the essay on Witches and other Night Fears Lamb's 
account of the nervous terrors of "dear little T. H." — known 
to be Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest boy. The moral 
drawn by Southey may be easily guessed. These nervous terrors 
were the natural result of the absence of definite Christian 
teaching in the systems of Leigh Hunt and others of the Radical 
set. 

Lamb was hurt by the attack on himself, but still more by 
the reflections on his friends ; and the greater part of his letter 
is employed in defending Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt. 
The breach with Southey was soon healed, and the old affec- 

2 E 



418 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

tionate intercourse renewed. If only for this reason, it is 
intelligible why Lamb did not care to reproduce the entire 
letter when he published the Last Essays of Mia in a collected 
form. I have dealt with the subject at some length in my 
memoir of Lamb. 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS.— P. 281. 
(London Magazine, December 1823.) 

For an account of G. D. — George Dyer — ^see notes to the 
essay, Oxford in the Vacation. The incident had actually 
occurred a few weeks only before the date of this essay. Mr. 
Procter supplements the account here given Avith some amusing 
particulars: — "I happened to go to Lamb's house, about an 
hour after his rescue and restoration to dry land, and met Miss 
Lamb in the passage in a state of great alarm ; she was whim- 
pering, and could only utter, ' Poor Mr. Dyer ! Poor Mr. Dyer ! ' 
in tremulous tones. I went upstairs, aghast, and found that 
the involuntary diver had been placed in bed, and that Miss 
Lamb had administered brandy and water, as a well-established 
preventive against cold. Dyer, unaccustomed to any thing stronger 
than the 'crystal spring,' was sitting upright in the bed per- 
fectly delirious. His hair had been rubbed up, and stood out 
like so many needles of iron-gray. ' I soon found out where I 
was, ' he cried out to me, laughing ; and then he went wander- 
ing on, his Avords taking flight into regions where no one could 
follow." 

And could such s2)acious virtue find a grave. 

— Lamb had headed this essay with an appropriate quotation 
from Milton's Lycidas. He now cites a less famous poem from 
the collection of tributary verse in which Lycidas made its first 
appearance — the little volume of Elegies on the death of Edward 
King, published at Cambridge in 1638. The couplet here quoted 
is from the contribution to this volume by John Cleveland, the 
Cavalier. It runs thus in the original : — 

* ' But can his sjjacious vertue find a grave 
Within th' imposthumed bubble of a wave." 

The sweet lyrist of Peter House. — The poet Gray. 

The mild Askew. — Anthony Askew, M.D. — See Dyer s Poevis, 
1801, p. 156 (note) : — " Dr. Anthony Askew, formerly a physician 
in London, once of Emmanuel College, well known in this and 
foreign countries for his acquaintance with Greek literature, and 
his valuable collection of Greek books and MSS. : a particular 
friend and patron of the author's early youth." 



NOTES. 419 

SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.— P. 286. 
(London Magazine, September 1823.) 

In the year 1820 William Hazlitt delivered a course of 
lectures at the Surrey Institution on the Literature of the Age 
of Elizabeth. In the sixth lecture of the course he dealt, among 
other writers, with Sidney, on whose Arcadia he made an 
elaborate onslaught. "It is to me," he says, "one of the 
greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual power upon 
record. It puts one in mind of the Court dresses and preposter- 
ous fashions of the time, which are grown obsolete and disgust- 
ing. It is not romantic, but scholastic ; not poetry, but 
casuistry ; not nature, but art, and the worst sort of art, which 
thinks it can do better than nature. Of the number of fine 
things that are constantly passing through the author's mind, 
there is hardly one that he has not contrived to spoil, and to 
spoil pirrposely and maliciousl}^, in order to aggrandise our idea 
of himself " — with much more in the same strain. In the course 
of his remarks he describes the sonnets inlaid in the Arcadia as 
"jejune, far-fetched, and frigid," the very words cited by Lamb 
in his essay ; and it is clear that Hazlitt's lecture was the 
immediate cause of the present paper. 

It is a lesson of high value to contrast Lamb's and Hazlitt's 
estimate of Sidney. Hazlitt possessed acuteness, wide reading, 
and had command of an excellent style, but he was (through 
political bias, among other causes, as Lamb suggests) out of 
sympathy with his subject. Moreover, Lamb was a poet. His 
few sentences beginning, " But they are not rich in words only," 
are truer and more satisfying than the whole of Hazlitt's minute 
analysis. 

I am afraid some of his addresses {"ad Leonoram" I viea,n) 
have rather erred on the other side- — Cowper translated most of 
Milton's Latin poems in skilful intimation of the Miltonic verse. 
It is significant that he "drew the line" at this exorbitant 
piece of flattery, which remains untranslated by him. 

Lord Oxford. — The "foolish nobleman," just before men- 
tioned. Sidney was grossly insulted by the young earl in a 
tennis-court, where they had met for play. According to 
Fulke'Greville, the earl called Sidney " a puppy " — the "oppro- 
'brious thing " alluded to by Lamb. It is worth noting that two 
centuries later another earl (Horace Walpole) made an equally 
memorable and insolent attack upon Sidney. See the notice of 
Fulke Greville in Walpole's Royal and JSfoble Authors. 

There is a touching incident associating Lamb's last days 
with those of Sidney. The last letter written by Lamb before 
the fatal issue of his accident was to Mrs. George Dyer, con- 



420 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

cerniug the safety of a certain book belonging to Mr. Gary of 
the British Museum, which Lamb had left by accident at her 
house. The book was the Thcatruin Poetarum of Edward 
Phillips, Milton's nephew. On the recovery of the volume it 
was found that the page was turned down at the notice of 
Philip Sidney. It was on this incident that Gary wrote his 
charming lines : — 

" So should it be, my gentle friend ; 
Thy leaf last closed at Sidney's end. 
Thou too, like Sidney, would'st have given 
The water, thirsting, and near Heaven ; 
Nay, were it wine, fiU'd to the brim. 
Thou hadst looked hard — but given, like him." 

NEWSPAPERS THIETY-FIVE YEARS AGO.— P. 295. 
{Englishman's Magazine, October 1S31.) 

The title of this essay was first given to it when it appeared 
in the Last Essays of Elia in 1833. The date, therefore, to 
which it refers is the year 1798, or thereabouts. Lamb's con- 
nection with the newspaper world began even earlier than this. 
He seems to have owed his first introduction to it to Goleridge, 
who published some of his own earliest verse in the columns of 
the Morning Chronicle. Coleridge was contributing sonnets to 
this paper as early as the year 1794, and among them appeared 
Lamb's sonnet (perhaps a joint composition with his friend) on 
Mrs. Siddons. After this period, until Coleridge's return from 
Germany at the end of 1799, we have no means of tracing 
Lamb's hand in the newspapers ; but from 1800 to 1803 frequent 
mention is made in Lamb's correspondence of his employment 
in the capacity described in this essay. It was his time of 
greatest poverty and struggle, when the addition of an extra 
fifty pounds a year to his income was of the greatest importance. 
Coleridge appears to have introduced Lamb to Daniel Stuart, 
the editor of the Morning Post. He was writing in the same 
year for the Albion, the final collapse of which, by the help of 
Lamb's epigram, is here described. " The Albion is dead," he 
writes to Manning on this occasion, "dead as nail in door — my 
revenues have died with it ; but I am not as a man without 
hope." He had now got an introduction, through his friend 
George Dyer, to the Morning Chronicle, under the editorship of 
Perry. In 1802 he was trying an entirely new line of writing 
in the Morning Post — turning into verse piose translations of 
German poems supplied by Coleridge. A specimen of Lamb's 
work of this kind has been preserved — Thekla's song in Wallen- 
stein. "As to the translations," he writes to Coleridge, "let 
me do two or three hundred lines, and then do you try the 



NOTES. 421 

nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. " His connection 
with the newspapers came to an end in 1803. " I have given 
up two guineas a week at the Post," he writes to Manning, 
"and regained my health and spirits, which were upon the 
wane. I grew sick, and Stuart unsatisfied. Lusisti satis, 
tempus abire est. I must cut closer, that's all." 

Daniel Stuart — who lived till 1846 — published in the Gentlc- 
man^s Magazine for June 1838 an account of his dealings with 
Colefidge, Wordsworth, and Lamb. It is amusing to hear the 
other side of the story. He says, " As for good Charles Lamb, 
I could never make anything of his writings. Coleridge re- 
peatedly pressed me to settle him on a salary, but it would not 
do. Of politics he knew nothing ; and his drollery was vapid 
when given in short paragraphs for a newspaper." Certainly 
no style was ever less fitted for journalism, in any department, 
than Lamb's. 

Boh Allen — our quondam sclioolfelloio. — He was a Grecian at 
Christ's Hospital in Lamb's time. See the stoiy of him, and 
his handsome face, in the essay on the Blue Coat School. 

John FenwicJc, — The Ralph Bigod of the essay, The Tivo Races 
of Men. 

An unlucky, or rather lucky, epigram from our pen. — The 
alleged apostasy of Sir James Mackintosh consisted in his 
having accepted, at the hands of Mr. Addington, the ofiice of 
Recorder of Bombay in 1804. His Vindicice Gallicm were pub- 
lished in 1791. Lamb's epigram was the following : — 

" Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, 
In the resemblance one thing dost thou lack ; 
When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, 
He went away, and wisely hang'd himself : 
This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt 
If thou hast any boAvels to gush out !" 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN 

THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.— P. 303. 

(The Atlmncewm, January and February 1833.) 

Apropos of what Lamb ■wi'ites in this essay on the Titian in 
the National Gallery, it is not unamusing to find the following 
sentence in a letter to Wordsworth of May 1833 :— 

' ' Thank you for your cordial reception of Elia. Inter nos, the 
' Ariadne ' is not a darling with me ; several incongruous things 
are in it, but in the composition it served me as illustrative." 



422 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

THE WEDDING.— P. 315. 

{London Magasinc, June 1825.) 

Sarah Burney, the daughter of Admiral Burney, married 
her cousin John Payne in April 1821, and her father died in 
November of the same year. Her age was between twenty - 
seven and twenty -eight. This is the foundation of fact on 
which this idyllic little story is built up. It is at least a curious 
coincidence that, when Lamb revised the essay for the Last 
Essays of Elia, he was himself looking forward to a bereave- 
ment strictly parallel to that of the old admiral. He and 
Mary were about to lose, by marriage, one who had been to 
them as an only child. Emma Isola married Mr. Moxon in 
July 1833. Lamb might indeed have said of himself, "He 
bears bravely up, but he does not come out with his iiashes of 
wild wit so thick as formerly . . . the youthfulness of the 
house is floAvn." Did he perchance remember, as he quoted his 
favourite Marvell, that the poet was bidding good-bye to one 
who had been his pupil, as Emma Isola had been Lamb's ? In 
the lines on Appleton House, Marvell predicts the marriage of 
Mary Fairfax — 

" While her glad parents most rejoice. 
And make their destiny their choice." 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING 
OF AGE.— P. 321. 

{London Magazine, Jannary 1S23.) 

OLD CHINA.— P. 327. 
{London Magazine-, Marcli 1S23.) 

This beautiful essay tells its own story — this time, we may 
be sure, without romance or exaggeration of any kind. It is a 
contribution of singular interest to our understanding of the 
happier days of Charles and Mary's united life. 

Dancing tJie hays. — The hays was an old English dance, 
involving some intricate figures. It seems to have been known 
in England up to fifty years ago. The dance is often referred 
to in the writers whom Lamb most loved. Herrick, for ex- 
ample, has — 

'■' On holy-dayes, when Virgins meet 
To dance the Heyes, with nimble feet. " 



NOTES. 423 

THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM.— P. 333. 

(London Magazine, June 1823.) 

Thomas Moore's Loves of the Angels had appeared in the year 
1823. Larab, as we may well believe, was not in general 
attracted to this poet, but there were reasons why this parti- 
cular poem may have been an exception to the rule. It was 
based-npon the translation in the Septuagint of the second verse 
in the sixth chapter of Genesis — "Angels of God" instead of 
"Sons of God." " Li addition to the fitness of the subject for 
poetry," Moore writes in his preface, "it struck me also as capable 
of affording an allegorical medium, through which might be 
shadowed out the fall of the soul from its original purity — the 
loss of light and happiness which it suffers in the pursuit of this 
world's perishable pleasures — and the punishments, both from 
conscience and Divine justice, with which impurity, pride, and 
presumptuous inquiry into the awful secrets of God are sure to 
be visited." This vein of thought had a strange fascination for 
Lamb, as we know from his reflections in N'ew Year's Eve, and 
his beautiful sonnet on Innocence. The topic, in short, may 
have attracted him, rather than Moore's fluent verse and boudoir 
metaphysics. It may be doubted whether he meant his sequel 
to the poem to be in any sense an allegory. It is probably 
fantastic merely. 

CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.— P. 336. 

(London Magazine, August 1822.) 

In the year 1814 Basil Montagu compiled a volume of mis- 
cellaneous extracts on the subject of temperance, under the title 
Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors. By a 
Water Drinker. The contents were taken from the writings of 
physicians, divines, poets, essayists and others who had pleaded 
the temperance cause. The volume was arrauged in sections, 
and to that headed Do Fermented Liquors contribute to Moral 
Excellence ? Lamb furnished (of course anonymously) his Con- 
fessions of a Drunkard. It was illustrated by an outline 
engraving of the Correggio drawing so powerfully described in 
the essay. A second edition of the book appeared in 1818. 

In the Quarterly Revieio for April 1822 appeared an article 
on Dr. Reid's treatise on Hypochondriasis and other Nervous 
Affections. These Confessions of a Drunkard were there referred 
to, as "a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance," 
which the reviewer went on to say, "we have reason to know 
is a true tale." I may be allowed to finish the story in words 
used by me elsewhere. " In order to give the author the oppor- 



424 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

tunity of contradicting this statement, the paper was reprinted 
in the London in the following August, under the signature of 
Elia. To it were appended a few words of 'pmonstrance with 
the Quarterly reviewer for assuming the litcial truthfulness of 
these confessions, but accompanied with certain significant 
admissions that showed Lamb had no right to be seriously 
indignant. ' It is indeed, ' he writes, ' a compound extracted 
out of his long observation of the effects of drinking upon all 
the world about him ; and this accumulated mass of misery he 
hath centred (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a 
single figure. We deny not that a portion of his ovni experiences 
may have passed into the picture (as who, that is not a washy 
fellow, but must at some time have felt the after-operation of a 
too generous cup ?) ; but then how heightened ! how exaggerated ! 
how little within the sense of the review, Avhen a part in their 
slanderous usage must be understood to stand for the whole. ' 
The truth is that Lamb, in writing his tract, had been playing 
with edge-tools, and could hardly have complained if they turned 
against himself. It would be those who knew Lamb, or at least 
the circumstances of his life, best, who would be most likely to 
accept these confessions as true." There is, in short, a thread 
of fact running through this paper, though with exaggerations 
and additions in abundance. The reference to the excessive 
indulgence in smoking we have too good reason for accepting 
as genuine. When some one watched him persistently emit 
dense volumes of smoke during the greater part of an evening, 
and asked him how he had contrived to do it, he answered, "I 
toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue." Compare his 
Ode to Tobacco. 

and not undo 'em 

To sicffer wet damnation to run thro' 'ewi. 

From the Revenger's Tragedy, bj^ Cyril Tourneur. Vindici is 
addressing the skull of his dead lady : — 
' ' Here's an eye. 
Able to tempt a great man — to serve God ; 
A pretty hanging lip, that has forgot how to dissemble. 
Methinks this mouth should make a swearer tremble ; 
A drunkard clasp his teeth, and not undo 'em, 
To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em." 

POPULAR FALLACIES.— P. 346. 
{The New Montlily Magazine, January to September ]S20.) 

Lamb writes to Wordsworth in 1833, when the volume was 
newly out : — " I want you in the Popular Fallacies to like the 
' home that is no home,' and ' rising with the lark.' " The former 



NOTES. 425 

of these naturally interested Lamb deeply, for it contains a 
Imrdly-disguised account of his own struggles with the crowd of 
loungers and good-natured friends who intruded on his leisure 
hours, and hindered his reading and writing. There is little to 
call for a note in these papers. The pun of Swift's criticised — 
with rare acumen — in the Fallacy, "that the worst puns are 
the best," was on a lady's mantua dragging to the ground a 
Crempna violin. Swift is said to have quoted Virgil's line — 

"Mantua vse miserse nimium vicina Cremonce. " 



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